In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

  She flung it onto the rumpled bed and went to the kitchen. The electric kettle plugged in and watermelon Pop-Tarts in the toaster, she toweled her hair dry and threw on her clothes. She turned on the BBC breakfast news to see that road works were delaying traffic into the City, there was a pile-up on the Ml just south of junction four, and a burst water main on the A23 had created a lake to the north of Streatham. It was another day of commuting hell.

  The kettle clicked off, and Barbara toddled to the kitchen to spoon some coffee powder into a mug decorated with a caricature of the Prince of Wales: chinless head, bulbous nose, and flapping ears sitting on a diminutive tartan-clad body She grabbed her Pop-Tarts, plopped them onto a kitchen towel, and carried this well-balanced nutritional masterpiece over to the dining table.

  The velvet heart sat in the centre, where Barbara had placed it when Hadiyyah had presented it to her on Sunday evening. There it waited for her reflections upon it, a self-satisfied little valentine of sorts, edged with white lace and filled with implication. Barbara had avoided thinking about it for more than thirty-six hours, and since she'd not seen either Hadiyyah or her father during that time, she'd been able to skip mentioning it in all conversations as well. But she couldn't exactly do that forever. Good manners, if nothing else, demanded that she make some sort of remark to Azhar the next time she saw him.

  What would it be? After all, he was a married man. True, he wasn't living with his wife. True, the woman he'd been living with since he'd been living with his wife was not his wife. True, that woman had apparently done a permanent runner, leaving behind a charming eight-year-old girl and a sombre—albeit thoughtful and kind—thirty-five-year-old man in need of adult female companionship. However, none of that went any distance towards making the situation into something that could be addressed easily under the time-honoured rules of etiquette. Not that Barbara had ever bothered to concern herself with the time-honoured rules of etiquette. But that was because she'd never really been in a spot where rules applied. Not man-woman rules, that is. And not man-woman-child rules. And certainly not man-wife-nonwife-child-additionalwoman rules. But still, when she next saw Azhar, she needed to be prepared. She needed to have something quick, useful, direct, meaningful, casual, and reasonable to say. And it had to spring from her tongue spontaneously, as if the thought that prompted it had come upon her that instant.

  So … What would it be? Thanks awfully much, old bean … just what are your intentions?. … How sweet of you to think of me.

  Bloody hell, Barbara thought, and crammed the rest of her Pop-Tart into her mouth. Human relationships were murder.

  A sharp knock sounded once on her door. Barbara started and looked at her watch. It was far too early for religious zealots to be out on the streets, and the British Gas meter reader had been the social highlight of her previous week. So who … ?

  Chewing, she got to her feet. She opened the door. Azhar was standing there.

  She blinked at him and wished she'd taken her rehearsal of grateful remarks more seriously. She said, “Hullo. Er … Morning.”

  He said, “You returned quite late last night, Barbara.”

  “Well … yeah. The case was tied up. I mean, it was tied up as much as these things can be tied up when we make an arrest. Which is to say the materials have to be drawn together still, in order to give them to the Crown Prosecutors. But as for the actual investigation—” She forced herself to stop. “Yeah. We made an arrest.”

  He nodded, his expression serious.“This is good news.”

  “Good news. Yes.”

  He looked beyond her. She wondered if he was trying to suss out whether she'd celebrated the investigation's conclusion with a chorus line of dancing Greek boys who were still lounging somewhere within. But then she remembered her manners and said, “Oh. Come in. Coffee? I've only got instant, I'm afraid,” and she added, “this morning,” as if every other day she stood in the kitchen furiously grinding beans.

  He said no, he couldn't stay long. Just a moment, in fact, because his daughter was dressing and he would be needed to plait her hair.

  “Right,” Barbara said. “But you don't mind if I … ?” And she indicated the electric kettle, using her Prince of Wales mug to do so.

  “No. Of course. I have interrupted your breakfast.”

  “Such as it is,” Barbara admitted.

  “I would have waited until a time more convenient, but I found this morning that I could no longer do so.”

  “Ah.” Barbara went to the kettle and switched it on, wondering about his gravity and what it portended. While it was true that he'd been grave at their every meeting all summer, there was something added to his gravity this morning, a way of looking at her that made her wonder if she had Pop-Tart frosting on her face somewhere. “Well, have a seat if you'd like. And there're fags on the table. You're sure about the coffee?”

  “Perfectly. Yes.” But he helped himself to one of her cigarettes and watched her in silence as she made her second cup of coffee. It was only when she joined him at the table—the velvet heart like an unmade declaration between them—that he spoke again. “Barbara, this is difficult for me. I am uncertain how to begin.”

  She slurped her coffee and tried to look encouraging.

  Azhar restlessly reached for the velvet heart. “Essex.”

  “Essex,” Barbara repeated helpfully.

  “Hadiyyah and I were at the seaside on Sunday. In Essex. As you know,” he reminded her.

  “Yeah. Right.” Now was the moment to say Thanks for the heart, but it wouldn't come out. “Hadiyyah told me what a good time you had. She mentioned you dropped in at the Burnt House Hotel as well.”

  “She dropped in,” he clarified. “That is to say that I took her there to wait with the good Mrs. Porter—you remember her I believe—”

  Barbara nodded. Sitting behind her zimmer frame, Mrs. Porter had looked after Hadiyyah while her father acted as liaison between the police and a small but restless Pakistani community during the course of a murder enquiry. “Right,” she said. “I remember Mrs. Porter. Nice of you to go to see her.”

  “As I said, it was Hadiyyah who visited Mrs. Porter. I myself visited the local police.”

  At this, Barbara felt her defences rising. She wanted to make some sort of remark that would derail the conversation they were about to have, but she couldn't think of one quickly enough because Azhar went on.

  “I spoke to Constable Fogarty,” he told her. “Constable Michael Fogarty, Barbara.”

  Barbara nodded. “Yeah. Mike. Right.”

  “He's the weapons officer for the Essex police.”

  “Yeah. Mike. Weapons. That's right.”

  “He told me what happened on the boat, Barbara. What DCI Barlow said about Hadiyyah, what she intended, and what you did.”

  “Azhar—”

  He rose. He walked to the day bed. Barbara grimaced to see that she'd not yet made it and the loathsome happy face T-shirt that she wore at night was still lying in a tangle with the sheets. She thought for a moment that he intended to straighten the bed—he was the most compulsively neat person she'd ever met—but he turned to face her. She could see his agitation.

  “How do I thank you? What can I say that could possibly thank you for the sacrifice you have made for my child?”

  “No thanks are needed.”

  “This is not true. DCI Barlow—”

  “Em Barlow was born with too much ambition, Azhar. That bollocksed up her judgement. It didn't mess with mine.”

  “But as a result you have lost your position. You have been disgraced. Your partnership with Inspector Lynley—whom I know you esteem—has been dissolved, has it not?”

  “Well, things between us aren't exactly peachy,” Barbara agreed. “But the inspector's got rules and regulations on his side so he's within his rights to be cheesed off at me.”

  “But this … all this is due to what you did … to your protection of Hadiyyah when DCI Barlow wanted to leave her, when
she called her a ‘Paki brat’ and was indifferent to her drowning in the sea.”

  He was so distressed that Barbara wished fervently that Constable Michael Fogarty had been taken ill on Sunday, absenting himself from the police station and leaving DCI Barlow the only one present who could—and would—give a seriously sanitised account of the North Sea chase that had ended with Barbara firing a weapon at her. As it was, she could only be grateful for the single fact that Fogarty, in making his report to Azhar, had mercifully not included the God damn that Emily Barlow had used before the words Paki brat that day.

  “I didn't think about the consequences,” Barbara told Azhar. “Hadiyyah was what was important. And she's still what's important. Full stop.”

  “I must find a way to show what I feel,” he said despite her words of reassurance. “I must not let you think that your sacrifice—”

  “Believe me, it wasn't a sacrifice. And as to thanks … Well, you've given me a heart, haven't you? And that'll do fine.”

  “A heart?” He looked confused. Then he followed the direction of Barbara's extended hand and saw the heart that he'd won from the crane grab game. “That. The heart. But that is nothing. I thought only of the words on it, Barbara, and how you might smile when you saw them.”

  “The words?”

  “Yes. Did you not see … ?” And he came to the table and flipped the heart over. On its obverse side—which she'd have seen well enough if she'd had the courage to examine the damn thing when Hadiyyah had given it to her—was embroidered I * … Essex. “It was a joke, you see. Because after what you went through in Essex, you can, of course, hardly love it. But you did not see the words?”

  “Oh, those words,” Barbara said hastily with a hearty ha-ha that was designed to illustrate the degree of her complicity in his little joke. “Yes. The old I love Essex routine. Just about the last spot on earth that I want to return to. Thanks, Azhar. This's far better than a stuffed elephant, isn't it?”

  “But it's not enough. And there's nothing else that I can give you in thanks. Nothing that is equal to what you gave me.”

  Barbara remembered what she'd learned about his people: lenādenā. The giving of a gift that was equal to or greater than the one which had been received. It was the way they indicated their willingness to engage in a relationship, an overt manner of declaring one's intentions without the indelicacy of speaking them openly. How sensible they were, the Asians, she thought. Nothing was left to guesswork in their culture.

  “Your wanting to find something of equal value is what counts, isn't it?” Barbara asked him. “I mean, we can make the wanting to find something count if we want to, can't we, Azhar?”

  “I suppose we can,” he said doubtfully.

  “Then consider the equal gift given. And go and plait Hadiyyah's hair. She'll be waiting for you.”

  He looked as if he might say more, but instead he came to the table and crushed out his cigarette. “Thank you, Barbara Havers,” he said quietly.

  “Cheers,” she replied. And she felt the ghost of a touch on her shoulder as he passed her on the way to the door.

  When it was shut behind him, Barbara chuckled wearily at her boundless folly. She picked up the heart and balanced it between her thumbs and index fingers. I love Essex, she thought. Well, there were worse ways he could have joked with her.

  She dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink and quickly did her few morning chores. Teeth cleaned and hair combed, with a smudge of blusher on each cheek in a bow to femininity, she grabbed her shoulder bag, locked the door behind her, and sauntered up the path towards the street.

  She went out the front gate but halted when she saw it.

  Lynley's silver Bentley was parked in the driveway.

  “You're off your patch, aren't you, Inspector?” she asked him as he got out of the car.

  “Winston phoned me. He said you'd left your car at the Yard last night and took a taxi home.”

  “We'd guzzled a few drinks and it seemed the better course.”

  “So he said. It was wise not to drive. I thought you might like a lift into Westminster. There are problems on the Northern Line this morning.”

  “When aren't there problems on the Northern Line?”

  He smiled. “So … ?”

  “Thanks.”

  She slung her shoulder bag into the passenger seat and climbed inside. Lynley got in beside her, but he didn't start the car. Instead, he took something from his jacket pocket. He handed it over.

  Barbara looked at it curiously. He'd given her a registration card for the Black Angel Hotel. It wasn't a blank card, however, which might have inspired her to think that he was offering her a holiday in Derbyshire. Rather, it was filled in with a name, an address, and other pertinent information about car types, number plates, passports, and nationalities. It had been made out to an M. R. Davidson, who had listed an address in West Sussex and an Audi as the vehicle that had carried him or her to the North.

  “Okay,” Barbara said. “I'll bite. What is it?”

  “A souvenir for you.”

  “Ah.” Barbara anticipated his starting the Bentley. He didn't do so. He merely waited. So she said, “A souvenir of what?”

  He said, “DI Hanken believed that the killer stayed at the Black Angel Hotel the night of the murders. He ran the cards of all the hotel guests through the DVLA to see if any of them were driving cars that were registered to a name different from the name they had put on the card. That was the one that didn't match up.”

  “Davidson,” Barbara said, examining the card. “Oh yes. I see. David's son. So Matthew King-Ryder stayed at the Black Angel.”

  “Not far from the moor, not far from Peak Forest, where the knife was found. Not far, as it turns out, from anything.”

  “And the DVLA showed this Audi as registered to him,” Barbara concluded. “And not to an M. R. Davidson.”

  “Things happened so quickly yesterday that we didn't actually see the report from the DVLA till late in the afternoon. The Buxton computers were down, so the information had to be compiled by phone. If they hadn't been down …” Lynley looked through the windscreen and spoke meditatively. “I want to believe that the fault lies in technology, that had we only got our hands on the DVLA information quickly enough, Andy Maiden would still be alive.”

  “What?” Barbara breathed the word, astounded. “Still be alive? What happened to him?”

  Lynley told her. He spared himself nothing, Barbara saw. But then, that was his way.

  He concluded with “It was a judgement call on my part not to talk directly about Nicola's prostitution when her mother was present. It was what Andy wanted and I went along. Had I simply done what I should have done …” He gestured aimlessly. “I let my feelings for the man get in the way. I made the wrong call, and as a result he died. His blood is on my hands as indelibly as if I'd wielded the knife.”

  “That's being a little rough on yourself,” Barbara said. “You didn't exactly have time to ponder the best way to handle things once Nan Maiden barged into your interview.”

  “No. I could see that she knew something. But what I thought she knew—or at least believed—was that Andy had murdered their daughter. And even then I didn't bring the truth to light because I couldn't believe he'd murdered their daughter.”

  “And he hadn't,” Barbara said. “So your decision was right.”

  “I don't think you can separate the decision from the outcome,”

  Lynley said. “I'd thought so before, but I don't think so now. The outcome exists because of the decision. And if the outcome is an unnecessary death, the decision was wretched. We can't twist the facts into a different picture no matter how much we'd like to do so.”

  It sounded like a conclusion to Barbara. She treated it as such. She reached for her seat belt and pulled it round her. She was about to fasten it, when Lynley spoke again.

  “You made the right decision, Barbara.”

  “Yeah, but I had the advantage over you,?
?? Barbara said. “I'd talked to Cilia Thompson in person. You hadn't. I'd talked to King-Ryder in person as well. And when I saw that he'd actually bought one of her gruesome paintings, it was easy for me to reach the conclusion that he was our man.”

  “I'm not talking about this case,” Lynley said. “I'm talking about Essex.”

  “Oh.” Barbara felt herself grow unaccountably small. “That,” she said. “Essex.”

  “Yes. Essex. I've tried to separate the judgement call you made that day from its outcome. I kept insisting that the child might have lived had you not interfered. But you didn't have the luxury to make calculations about the boat's distance from the child and someone's ability to throw a life belt to her, did you, Barbara? You had an instant in which to decide what to do. And because of the decision you made, the little girl lived. Yet given the luxury of hours to think about Andy Maiden and his wife, I still made the wrong call in their case. His death's on my shoulders. The child's life is on yours. You can examine the situations any way you want to, but I know which outcome I'd prefer to be responsible for.”

  Barbara looked away, in the direction of the house. She didn't quite know what to say. She wanted to tell him that she had lain awake nights and paced away days waiting for the moment when he'd say he understood and approved what she'd done that day in Essex, but now that the moment had finally come, she found that she couldn't bring herself to say the words. Instead, she muttered, “Thanks. Inspector. Thanks,” and she swallowed hard.

  “Barbara! Barbara!” The cry came from the flagstone area in front of the ground floor flat. Hadiyyah was standing there, not on the stones but on the wooden bench in front of the french windows to the flat she shared with her dad. “Look, Barbara!” she crowed, and danced a little jig. “I got my new shoes! Dad said I didn't have to wait till Guy Fawkes. Look! I got my new shoes!”

  Barbara lowered her window. “Excellent.” she called. “You're a picture, kiddo.”