In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

  “I mean I'm sorry for what I said … how I acted … when I questioned you, Sam. About that night. You know.”

  She gave particular attention to a window pane that was crusted with guano, which had dripped from a hundred years of birds’ nests tucked into a crevice above them. “You were upset.”

  “I didn't need to accuse you though. Of … of whatever.”

  “Of murdering the woman you loved, you mean.” She looked his way. The ruddy colour in his face had heightened.

  “Sometimes I can't get a rein on the voices inside my head. I start talking and whatever the voices have been shouting pops out. It's nothing to do with what I believe. I'm sorry.”

  She wanted to say, But she wasn't good for you anyway, Julie. Why did you never see that she wasn't good for you? And when will you see what her death can mean? To you. To me. To us, Julie. But she didn't say it because to say it would be to reveal what she couldn't afford—or even bear—to reveal to him. “Accepted,” she said instead.

  “Thanks, Sam. You're a brick,” he said.

  “Again.”

  “I mean—”

  She flashed him a smile. “It's okay. I understand. Hand me the hose pipe. These need dousing now.”

  A burble of water was all they could risk against the old windows. Sometime in the future it would be necessary to have all the lead replaced or what was left of the ancient glass would definitely be destroyed. But that was a conversation for another time. With his present money worries, Julian didn't need to hear Samantha's prescription for saving another part of the family home.

  He said, “It's Dad.”

  She said, “What?”

  “What's on my mind. Why I've been going through the books. It's Dad.” And then he explained, ending ruefully with, “I've been waiting for years for him to choose sobriety—”

  “All of us have waited.”

  “—and now he's done that, I got all caught up in trying to come up with a way to seize the moment before it passes. I know the truth of the matter. I've read enough about it to understand he has to do it for himself. He has to want it. But if you could have seen him, heard how he was talking … I don't think he's had a drink all day.”

  “Hasn't he? No, I suppose he hasn't.” And she thought of her uncle as he'd been the previous night: slurring not a word and coaxing from her an admission that she didn't want to make. She felt a stillness come over her, one in which she knew that she too could seize the moment—could use it and mould it—or let it pass. She said carefully, “Perhaps he does want it this time, Julie. He's getting older. Facing his … well, his mortality.” His mortality, she thought, not his death. She wouldn't use that word, because in this instant it was crucial to maintain a delicate balance in the conversation. “I expect everyone comes face-to-face with … well, with the knowledge that nothing goes on forever. Perhaps he's feeling older all at once and he wants to sort himself out while he still has the chance.”

  “But that's just it,” Julian said. “Does he have a chance? How can he do it without help when he's never been able to do it before? And now that he's finally asked for help how can I fail to give it? Because I want to give it. I want him to succeed.”

  “We all do, Julie. The family. We want that.”

  “So I went through the books. Because of the health insurance we have. I don't even need to read the small print to know there's no way …” He examined the pane he was working on, scraping his fingernail against the glass.

  Nails on a chalkboard. Samantha shuddered. She turned her head from the sound.

  Which was when she saw him, where he always was. He stood at the window in the parlour. He watched her talking to his son. And as she watched him watching her, Samantha saw her uncle raise his hand. One finger touched his temple and then his hand dropped. He might have been smoothing his hair from his face. But the reality was that the gesture looked very much like a mock salute.

  CHAPTER 20

  e got in straightaway yesterday,” Nkata said when no entry buzzer answered their ringing of the bell next to the white front door. “Could be they got word 'bout us from the Platt bird and did a runner. What d'you think?” “I didn't get the impression that Shelly Platt had any sympathy for the Reeves, did you?” Lynley rang the bell at MKR Financial Management another time. “She seemed happy enough to put a spanner in their works so long as no trail led back to her. Do the Reeves not live here as well as run their business from here, Winnie? It looks like a residence to me.” Lynley moved back from the door, then descended the stairs to the pavement. While the candy-floss building appeared uninhabited, he had the distinct sensation of being watched from within. It could have been his impatience to get Martin Reeve under his thumb for a thorough grilling, but something suggested to him a form just out of sight behind the sheer curtains of a second floor window. Even as he stood gazing up at it, the curtain twitched. He called up, “Police. It's in your interests to let us in, Mr. Reeve. I'd rather not have to phone Ladbroke Grove police station for their assistance.”

  A minute passed during which Nkata leaned on the bell and Lynley walked to the Bentley to phone the Ladbroke Grove station. This apparently did the trick, for as he was speaking to the duty sergeant, Nkata called, “We're in, spector,” and shoved the door open. He waited for Lynley inside the hall.

  The building was quiet, the air bearing a faint odour of lemons: from polish, perhaps, used to maintain an impressive Sheraton wardrobe in the corridor. As Lynley and Nkata shut the door behind them, a woman descended the stairs.

  Lynley's first thought was that she looked like a doll. In fact, she looked like a woman who'd spent considerable time and energy—not to mention money—in moulding herself into a remarkable duplicate of Barbie. She wore black Lycra from head to toe, displaying a body so outrageously perfect that only imagination and silicone could have produced it. This had to be Tricia Reeve, Lynley thought. Nkata had done a fine job of describing her.

  Lynley introduced himself, saying, “We'd like a word with your husband, Mrs. Reeve. Will you fetch him for us, please?”

  “He's not here.” She'd stopped at the lowest step on the stairs. She was tall, Lynley saw, and she'd made herself taller by refusing to descend completely to their level.

  “Where's he gone to, then?” Assiduously, Nkata prepared to take down the information.

  Tricia's hand was on the staircase railing, long, skeletal fingers encumbered by rings. She had a formidable grip upon the oak: Her diamonds glittered as her arm trembled with the force she was applying. “I don't know.”

  “Try out a few ideas on us,” Nkata said. “I'll take them all down. We're happy to check 'round for him. We got the time.”

  Silence.

  “Or we could wait here,” Lynley said. “Where might we do that, Mrs. Reeve?”

  Her glance flickered. Blue eyes, Lynley saw. Enormous pupils. Nkata had told him that she was a user. It appeared that she was spiked up right now. “Camden Passage,” she said, her pale tongue coming out to lick bee-stung lips. “There's a dealer there. Miniatures. Martin collects. He's gone to look at what's been brought in from an estate sale last week.”

  “The name of the dealer?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Name of the gallery? The shop?”

  “I don't know.”

  “What time d'he leave?”

  “I don't know. I was out.”

  Lynley wondered in what sense she was using out. He had a fairly good idea. “We'll wait for him, then. Shall we show ourselves into your reception room? Is it this door, Mrs. Reeve?”

  She followed them, saying quickly, “He's gone to Camden Passage. From there to meet some painters who're working on a house of ours in Cornwall Mews. I've the address. Shall I give it to you?”

  The switch to cooperation was far too swift. Either Reeve was in the house or she'd come up with a plan to put him on the alert to their search for him. That would be easy enough. Lynley couldn't imagine a man of Reeve's descriptio
n wandering the byways of London without a mobile phone in his possession. The moment he and Nkata were out the front door and on his trail, Reeve's wife would be at the phone to warn him.

  “I think we'll wait all the same,” Lynley said. “Joni us, Mrs. Reeve. I can phone the Ladbroke Grove station for a female constable if you're feeling uncomfortable alone with us. Shall I do that?”

  “No!” With her right hand she clasped her left elbow. She looked at her watch, and the muscles in her neck convulsed as she worked her way through a swallow. She was coming down, Lynley speculated, and checking to see when she could next hit up with relative safety. The presence of the police was an obstacle that thwarted her need, and that might be useful. She said insistently, “Martin isn't here. If I knew more, I'd tell you. But the fact is, I don't.”

  “I'm unconvinced.”

  “I'm telling you the truth!”

  “Tell us another, then. Where was your husband on Tuesday night?”

  “On Tuesday … ?” She looked honestly confused. “I have no … He was here. With me. He was here. We spent the evening in.”

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  The question obviously rang alarm bells for her. She said in a rush, “We went for curry at the Star of India on Old Brompton Road round half past eight.”

  “So you weren't in, then.”

  “We spent the rest of the evening here.”

  “Did you book a table at the restaurant, Mrs. Reeve?”

  “The maître d’ will remember us. He and Martin had words because we hadn't booked in advance and they didn't want to let us have a table at first, even though there were several vacant when we got there. We had a meal. Then we came home. That's the truth. On Tuesday. That's what we did.”

  It would be easy enough to confirm their presence at the restaurant, Lynley thought. But how many maâtre d s’ would recall on what particular day they'd had a row with a demanding customer who'd failed to book and also thus failed to provide himself with a reliable alibi? He said, “Nicola Maiden worked for you.”

  She said, “Martin didn't kill Nicola! I know that's why you've come, so don't let's pretend otherwise. He was with me on Tuesday night. We went to the Star of India for a meal. We were home by ten, and we stayed in the rest of the evening. Ask our neighbours. Someone will have seen us either going out or coming back. Now, do you want the address of the mews house or not? Because if not, I'd like you to leave.” Another agitated glance at her watch.

  Lynley decided to press her. He said to Nkata, “We're going to need a search warrant, Winnie.”

  Tricia cried, “What for? I've told you everything. You can phone the restaurant. You can talk to our neighbours. How can you get a search warrant when you haven't bothered to see if I'm telling you the truth in the first place?” She sounded horrified. Better yet, she sounded afraid. The last thing she wanted, Lynley expected, was to have a team of police going through her belongings, no matter what they were looking for. She may have had no hand in the death of Nicola Maiden, but possession of narcotics wasn't going to go down a treat with the Crown Prosecutors, and she knew that.

  “We sometimes cut corners,” Lynley said pleasantly. “This looks like a good time to do so. We've a murder weapon missing as well as a piece of clothing from the dead girl and the boy, and if either article turns up in this house, we'll want to know why.”

  “Sh'll I phone, then, Guv?” Nkata enquired blandly.

  “Martin didn't kill Nicola! He hasn't seen her in months! He didn't even know where she was! If you're looking for someone who might have wanted to see her dead, there are plenty of men who—” She stopped herself.

  “Yes?” Lynley asked. “Plenty of men?”

  She brought up her left arm to cradle her right elbow, just as her right had been cradling her left. She walked the length of the reception room and back.

  Lynley said, “Mrs. Reeve, we know exactly what MKR Financial Management is fronting. We know that your husband hires students to work as escorts and prostitutes for him. We know that Nicola Maiden was one of those students and that she left your husband's employ along with Vi Nevin to set up in business on her own. The information we have right now can lead directly to charges against you and your husband, and I expect you're well aware of that. So if you'd like to avoid being charged, tried, sentenced, and locked up, I suggest you cooperate straightaway.”

  She looked rigid. Her lips hardly moved when she said, “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know about your husband's relationship with Nicola Maiden. Pimps are known for—”

  “He isn't a pimp!”

  “—frequently displaying displeasure if one of their stable decides to break away from them.”

  “That's not what it's like. That's not how it was.”

  “Really?” Lynley asked. “How was it, then? Vi and Nicola decided to start their own business, which cut out your husband. But they did so without informing him. He can't have liked that very much, once he sussed it out.”

  “You're getting it wrong.” She went to the ornate desk and out of a drawer she took a packet of Silk Cut. She shook one out and lit it. The phone began to ring. She glanced down at it, reached forward to press a button, stopped herself at the final moment. After twenty double rings, it was silent. But less than ten seconds later it started up again. She said, “The computer should be getting that. I can't think why …” And with an uneasy look in the direction of the police, she snatched up the receiver and said tersely, “Global,” into it. Then after a moment of listening, and spoken in the most pleasant of tones she said, “It depends what you want, actually …. Yes. That shouldn't be a problem at all. May I have your number, please? I'll ring you back shortly.” She scribbled on a paper. That done, she looked up defiantly as if to say Prove it, to what Lynley was thinking about the conversation that she'd just had.

  He was happy to oblige her. “Global,” Lynley said. “That's the name of the escort agency, Mrs. Reeve? Global what? Global Dating? Global Desires? What?”

  “Global Escorts. And providing an educated escort to a businessman in town for a conference isn't illegal.”

  “Living off immoral earnings, however, is. Mrs. Reeve, do you really want the police to take possession of your account books? Assuming, of course, that there are account books for MKR Financial Management in the first place? We can do that, you know. We can ask for documentation of every pound you've made. And once we're through with our bit of research, we can hand everything over to the Inland Revenue so that their chaps can make certain you've donated your fair share to the support of the government. How does that sound to you?”

  He gave her time to ponder. The telephone went again. After three double rings, it switched onto another line with a soft click. An order being taken elsewhere, Lynley thought. By mobile, remote control, or satellite. Wasn't progress a wonderful thing.

  Tricia seemed to reach some sort of realisation. Obviously, she knew that Global Escorts and the position of the Reeves were compromised at this point: One word from Lynley to the Inland Revenue or even to the Ladbroke Grove police stations vice boys, and the Reeves’ entire way of life was on the chopping block. And that didn't even begin to address what could happen to them once a search of the premises unearthed whatever mood-altering substance was squirreled away somewhere in the house, waiting to work its magic on Tricia. All this knowledge seemed to settle upon her like soot from a fire she'd lit herself.

  She gathered herself together. “All right. If I give you a name—if I give you the name—it can't have come from me. Is that understood? Because if word gets out about an indiscretion committed at this end of the business …” She let the rest of the sentence hang.

  Indiscretion was a unique way of labeling it, Lynley thought. And why in God's name did she think that she was in any position to bargain with him? He said, “Mrs. Reeve, the business—as you call it—is finished.”

  “Martin,” she said, “won't see it that way.”

&
nbsp; “Martin,” Lynley countered, “will find himself held on charges if he doesn't.”

  “And Martin will ask for bail. He'll be out on the street in twenty-four hours. Where will you be by then, Inspector? No closer to the truth, I expect.” She might have looked like Barbie, she might have sautéed part of her brain in drugs, but somewhere along the line she'd learned a bit about bargaining, and she was doing it now with a fair amount of expertise. Lynley reckoned that her husband would have been proud of her. She had no legal leg to stand on, and she stood there anyway, pretending she had. He had to admire her chutzpah, if nothing else. She said, “I can give you a name—the name, as I've said—and you can go on your way. I can say nothing and you can search the house, cart me off to gaol, arrest my husband, and be not an inch closer to Nicola's killer. Oh, you'll have our books and our records. But you can't expect that we're so stupid as to list our punters by name. So what will you gain? And how much time will you lose?”

  “I'm prepared to be reasonable if the information's good. And in the time it takes me to ascertain the information's viability, I would assume you and your husband would be considering where to relocate your business. Melbourne comes to mind, what with the change in law.”

  “That might take some time.”

  “As will the verification of information.”

  Tit for tat. He awaited her decision. She finally made it and took up a pencil from the top of the desk. “Sir Adrian Beattie,” she said as she wrote. “He was mad about Nicola. He was willing to pay whatever she wanted if he could keep her all to himself. I don't expect he much liked the thought of her expanding her business, do you?”

  She handed over the address. It was in the Boltons.

  It appeared, Lynley thought, that they had the London lover at last.

  When Barbara Havers found the note on her door upon her arrival home that evening, she remembered the sewing lesson with a jolt. She said, “Bloody hell. Damn it,” and berated herself for having forgotten. True, she was involved in a case, and Hadiyyah would surely understand that. But Barbara hated to think that she might have been the cause of disappointment to her little friend.