In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

  Nkata took a position in the last row of the stalls. Barbara placed herself off stage, in the deep darkness provided by a bulky piece of scenery. Although the traffic and the pedestrians outside the theatre had made a din that seemed to run the length of Shaftesbury Avenue, inside the building it was tomb-silent. So when their quarry entered by the stage door some seven minutes later, Barbara heard him.

  He did everything as Nkata had instructed him. He closed the door. He made his way to the backstage area. He flipped on the working lights above the stage. He walked to stage centre. He stood pretty much where Hamlet would probably lie dying in Horatio's arms, Barbara realised. It was such a nice touch.

  He looked out into the darkened theatre and said, “All right, damn you. I'm here.”

  Nkata spoke from the back, where the shadows obscured him. “So I see.”

  King-Ryder took a step forward and said unexpectedly in a high, pained voice, “You killed him, you filthy bastard. You killed him. Both of you. All of you. And I swear to God, I'll make you pay.”

  “I didn't do no killing. I done no traveling to Derbyshire lately.”

  “You know what I'm talking about. You killed my father.”

  Barbara frowned as she heard this. What the hell was he on about?

  “Seems like I heard that bloke shot himself,” Nkata said.

  “And why? Just why the hell do you think he shot himself? He needed that music. And he would have had it—every sodding sheet of it—if you and your fucking mates … He shot himself because he thought … he believed … My father believed …” King-Ryder's voice broke. “You killed him. Give me that music. You killed him.”

  “We need to make ourselfs an arrangement first.”

  “Come into the light where I can see you.”

  “Don't think so. What I figure is this: What you can't see, you don't hurt.”

  “You're mad if you think I'll hand over a wad of money to someone I can't even see.”

  “Expected your dad to do the same though.”

  “Don't mention him to me. You're not fit to speak his name.”

  “Feeling guilty?”

  “Just give me that God damn music. Step up here. Act like a man. Hand it over.”

  “It's going to cost you.”

  “Fine. What?”

  “What your dad had to pay.”

  “You're mad.”

  “Nice little packet of dosh that was,” Nkata said. “I'm happy to take it off your hands. And play no games, man. I know the amount. I'll give you twenty-four hours to have it here, in cash. I'spect things take longer when St. Helier's involved, and I'm an understanding kind of bloke, I am.”

  The mention of St. Helier took things too far. Barbara saw that when King-Ryder's back stiffened suddenly as every nerve ending went on the alert. No ordinary yobbo in an ordinary scam would have known about that bank in St. Helier.

  King-Ryder moved away from centre stage. He peered into the darkness of the stalls. Warily, he said: “Who the hell are you?”

  Barbara took the cue.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Mr. King-Ryder.” She stepped out of the darkness. “The music's not here, by the way. And to be honest, it probably never would have surfaced at all had you not killed Terry Cole to get it back. Terry had given it to his neighbour, the old lady, Mrs. Baden. And she hadn't the least idea what it was.”

  “You,” King-Ryder said.

  “Right. Do you want to come quietly, or shall we have a scene?”

  “You've got nothing on me,” King-Ryder said. “I didn't say a damn thing that you can use to prove I lifted a finger against anyone.”

  “Somewhat true, that.” Nkata came forward down the centre aisle of the theatre. “But we've got ourselves a nice leather jacket up in Derbyshire. And if your dabs match up with the dabs we pull off it, you're going to have one hell of a time dancing your way out of the dock.”

  Barbara could almost see the wheels spinning wildly in King-Ryder's skull as he dashed through his options: fight, flight, or surrender. The odds were against him—despite one of the opposition being a woman—and while the theatre and the surrounding neighbourhood provided myriad places to run to and to hide, even had he tried to flee, it was only a matter of time before they nabbed him.

  His posture altered again. “They killed my father,” he said obscurely. “They killed my dad.”

  It was when Andy Maiden hadn't materialised at Broughton Manor within two hours that Lynley began to doubt the conclusions he'd drawn from the note that the man had left in Maiden Hall. A phone call from Hanken—informing him of Will Upman's safety—further solidified Lynley's doubts.

  “There's no sign of him here, either,” Lynley told his colleague. “Pete, I'm getting a bad feeling about this.”

  His bad feeling grew ominous when Winston Nkata phoned from London. He had Matthew King-Ryder at the Yard, Nkata told him in a rapid recitation that offered no opportunity for interruption. Barbara Havers had developed a plan to nab him, and it had worked like a charm. The bloke was ready to talk about the murders. Nkata and Havers could lock him up and wait for the inspector or they could have at him themselves. What were Lynley's wishes?

  “It was all about that music Barb found in Battersea. Terry Cole got between the music and what was supposed to happen to the music, and King-Ryder's dad blew his brains out over it. Matthew was 'venging himself for the death, so he claims. 'Course, he wanted that music back as well.”

  Lynley listened blankly as Nkata talked about the West End, the new production of Hamlet, phone boxes in South Kensington, and Terry Cole. When he had finished and he repeated his question—did the inspector want them to wait until his return to take Matthew King-Ryder's statement?—Lynley said numbly, “What about the girl? Nicola. What about her?”

  “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nkata replied.

  “King-Ryder killed her because she was there. When the arrow hit Terry, she saw him with the bow. Barb says she saw a picture in his flat, by the way: Matthew as a kid posing with Dad on Sports Day at school. He was wearing a quiver, she says. She saw the strap of it running across his chest. I 'xpect if we get a warrant, we'll find that long bow in his digs. D'you want me to get on to that as well?”

  “How was Havers involved?”

  “She grilled Vi Nevin when the girl came to last night. She got most of the details from her.” Lynley could hear Nkata draw a deep breath to hurry on. “Since Nevin didn't seem like part of the case, 'spector … because of that Islington business … the threat … the wheel clamp and Andy Maiden and all … I told her to do it. I told Barb to talk to her. If things come down to reprimands, I'll take the rap on that.”

  Lynley felt stunned by the amount of information Nkata had passed on to him, but he found the voice to say, “Well done, Winston.”

  “I just went along with Barb, spector.”

  “Then well done to Constable Havers as well.”

  Lynley rang off. He found that his movements were slower than normal. Surprise—shock—was the cause. But when he'd finally managed to take in the extent of what had occurred in London during his absence, he felt apprehension descend like a cloud.

  After her appearance at the Buxton police station, Nancy Maiden had gone home to await word of her husband's whereabouts. Stubbornly refusing the offer of a female constable to remain with her until Andy turned up, she'd said, “Find him. Please,” to Lynley as she'd left the station. And her eyes had tried to communicate something that she wouldn't put into words.

  He realised the challenge that a search for Andy Maiden presented. If he'd learned nothing else in the past few days, he'd come to know that the Peak District was vast: crosshatched by hiking trails, distinguished by utterly different topographical phenomena, and marked with five hundred thousand years of man's habitation upon it. But when he considered the desperate state that Andy had been in when they'd last spoken and he combined this state with the words I'm taking care of this myself, he had a
fairly good idea where his search should begin.

  Lynley told the Brittons and Samantha McCallin to remain in the Long Gallery with their police guards until further notice. He left them there.

  He sped north from Broughton Manor towards Bakewell, propelled by an urgency born of dread. Andy believed that the investigation was heading unstoppably in his direction, and everything Lynley and Hanken had done and said at their last two meetings with the man had communicated that brutal fact. Should he be arrested for his daughter's murder—should he even be questioned more thoroughly about his daughter's murder—the truth of Nicola's life in London would come out. And he'd already demonstrated the extremes to which he was willing to go in order to keep the truth of that life hidden.

  Lynley tore across the district to Sparrowpit and flew along the country road beyond it to the white iron gate, behind which lay the unbroken expanse of Calder Moor. A Land Rover stood at the far end of the truncated lane that led onto the moor. Directly behind it was a rusting Morris.

  Lynley set off at a jog along the muddy, rut-filled footpath. Because he did not wish to consider the extreme Andy might have gone to in order to keep Nicola's secrets from her mother, he concentrated on the one recollection that had bound him to the other man for more than ten years.

  Wearing a wire is the easy part, boy-o, Dennis Hextell had told him. Opening your mouth without sounding like you've got starch in your knickers is something else. Hextell had despised him, had patiently anticipated his failure to portray himself undercover as anything other than what he was: the privileged son of a privileged son. Andy Maiden, on the other hand, said, Give him a chance, Den. And when that chance had resulted in an entire lorry of semtex—intended as bait—hijacked by the very people it was intended to entrap, the message Americans don't use the word torch, Jack arrived at the Met within the same hour and served as illustration of how a single syllable can cost lives and destroy careers. That it hadn't destroyed Lynley's was owing to Andy Maiden. He'd taken the stricken young officer aside after the subsequent Belfast bombing and said, “Come in here, Tommy. Talk to me. talk.”

  And Lynley had done, eventually. He had poured out his guilt, his confusion, and his sorrow in a manner that ultimately told him how badly he needed a figure to act the role of parent in his life.

  Andy Maiden had stepped into that part without ever questioning why Lynley had needed him so desperately to do so. He'd said, “Listen to me, son,” and Lynley had listened, in small part because the other man was his superior officer, in large part because no one before had ever used the word son when speaking to him. Lynley came from a world where people recognised their individual places in the social hierarchy and generally kept to them or felt the consequences for not doing so. But Andy Maiden was not such a man. “You're not cut out for SO10,” Andy had told him. “What you've been through proves that, Tommy. But you had to go through it to know, d'you understand? And there's no sin in learning, son. There's only sin in refusing to take what you've learned and do something with it.”

  That guiding philosophy of Andy Maiden's life reverberated now in Lynley's mind. The SO 10 officer had used it to map his entire career, and there was very little in the past few days of their re-acquaintance to reassure Lynley that Andy wouldn't follow that same philosophy today.

  Lynley's fears drove him towards Nine Sisters Henge. When he reached it, the place was silent, except for the wind. This gushed and ceased and gushed in great gusts like air from a bellows. It blew from the east off the Irish Sea and promised more rain in the coming hours.

  Lynley approached the copse and entered. The ground was still damp from the morning rain, and leaves fallen from the birches made a spongy padding beneath his feet. He followed the path that led from the sentry stone into the middle of the copse. Out of the wind, only the tree leaves susurrating provided sound aside from his own breathing, which was harsh from exertion.

  At the final moment, he found that he didn't want to approach. He didn't want to see, and more than anything he didn't want to know. But he forced himself forward into the circle. And it was at the circle's centre that he found them.

  Nan Maiden half-sat and half-knelt, her legs folded beneath her and her back to Lynley. Andy Maiden lay, one leg cocked and the other straight out, with his head and shoulders cradled in his wife's lap.

  The rational part of Lynley's mind said, That would be where all the blood is coming from, from his head and his shoulders. But the heart of Lynley said, Good God no, and wished what he saw as he circled round the two figures was only a dream: a nightmare coming, as all dreams come, from what lies within the subconscious and cries for scrutiny when one is most afraid.

  He said, “Mrs. Maiden. Nancy.”

  Nan raised her head. She'd bent to Andy, so her cheeks and her forehead were splodged with his blood. She wasn't weeping and perhaps, beyond tears at this point, she hadn't wept at all. She said, “He thought he'd failed. And when he found that he couldn't make things good again …” Her hands tightened on her husband's body, trying to press closed the gash in his neck where the blood had throbbed out of him, bathing his clothes and pooling beneath him. “He had to do … something.”

  Lynley saw that a blood-spattered paper lay crumpled on the ground next to her. On it, he read what he'd expected to see: “I did it. Nancy, I'm sorry.” Andy Maiden's brief and apocryphal confession to the murder of a daughter he had deeply loved.

  “I didn't want to believe, you see,” Nan Maiden said, gazing down at her husband's ashen face and smoothing back his hair. “I couldn't believe and live with myself. And continue to live with him. I saw that something was terribly wrong when his nerves went bad, but I couldn't think he'd ever have hurt her. How could I think it? Even now. How?”

  “Mrs. Maiden …” Lynley had no words for her. She was too much in shock to comprehend the scope of what lay behind her husband's actions. Right now her horror—born of her husband's putative murder of their daughter—was quite enough for her to contend with.

  Lynley squatted next to Nan Maiden and put his hand on her shoulder. “Mrs. Maiden,” he said. “Come away from here. I've left my mobile in the car and we're going to need to phone the police.”

  “He is the police,” she said. “He loved that job. He couldn't do it any longer because his nerves wouldn't take it.”

  “Yes,” Lynley said, “Yes. I've been told.”

  “Which is why I knew, you see. But still I couldn't be sure. I could never be sure, so I didn't want to say. I couldn't risk it.”

  “Of course.” Lynley tried to urge her to her feet. “Mrs. Maiden, if you'll come—”

  “I thought if I could just protect him from ever having to know … That's what I wanted to do. But it turns out that he knew about everything anyway, didn't he, so we might have actually talked about it, Andy and I. And if we'd talked about it … Do you see what that means? If we'd talked, I could have stopped him. I know it. I hated what she was doing—at first I thought I'd die from the knowledge of it—and if I'd known that she'd told him what she was doing as well …” Nan bent to Andy again. “We would have had each other. At the very least. We could have talked. And I would have said the right words to stop him.”

  Lynley dropped his hand from her shoulder. He'd been listening all along, but he suddenly realised that he hadn't been hearing. The sight of Andy—his throat slashed open by his own hand—had clouded all his senses save his vision. But he finally heard what Nan Maiden was saying. Hearing, he finally understood.

  “You knew about her,” he said. “You knew.”

  And a yawning chasm of responsibility opened up beneath him as he saw the part he himself had played in Andy Maiden's purposeless death.

  “I followed him,” Matthew King-Ryder said.

  They'd taken him to an interview room, where he sat at one side of a Formica-topped table while Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata sat on the other side. In between them at one end of the table, a tape player whirred, recording his answers.
>
  King-Ryder appeared defeated by more than one aspect of his present situation. His future sealed by the existence of a leather jacket and the presence of a sliver of Port Orford cedar in the wound of one of his victims, he had apparently turned to a review of some of the unpleasant realities that had led him to this juncture. Those past realities joined with his future prospects to alter him appreciably. Upon his entry into the interview room, the vengeance-fueled anger that had defined his arrival at the Agincourt Theatre had become the devastated submission of the fighter who faces surrender.

  He told the first part of his story in a monotone. This was the background in which he laid out the grievance that had prompted him to blackmail his own father. David King-Ryder, worth so many millions that it took the services of a team of accountants to keep track of all his money, had decided to put his fortune into a fund for creative artists upon his death, leaving not a penny of it to his own children. One of these children accepted the terms of the King-Ryder will with the resignation of a daughter who knew only too well that it would be profitless to argue against such a course of action. The other child—Matthew—had sought a way round the situation.

  “I'd known about the Hamlet music for years, but Dad didn't know that,” Matthew told them. “He wouldn't have known since he and my mother were long divorced when Michael wrote the score, and he never realised that Michael had kept in touch with us. He was actually more like a dad to me than Dad was, Michael Chandler. He played the score for me—parts of it, that is—when I visited him for tea at half-terms and holidays. He wasn't married then, but he wanted a son and I was happy enough for him to act the part of my father.”

  David King-Ryder hadn't thought the Hamlet score had much potential, so upon Michael Chandler's completion of it, the partners had filed it away twenty-two years ago. There it had remained—buried among the King-Ryder/Chandler memorabilia in the offices of King-Ryder Productions in Soho. Thus, when David King-Ryder had presented it as his latest effort, Matthew had instantly recognised not only the music and the lyrics but also what they represented to his father: a final attempt to salvage a reputation that had been all but destroyed by two successive and expensive failures as a solo act once his longtime partner had drowned.