Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Miss Kubowksy said, “I wouldn't have bothered with it normally, except I saw on the report that the scapula-that's one of the bones in the back, did you know?-had a weapon mark on it, so I went ahead and compared the mark with the knife blades. With all the knife blades. And what do you know?”

“What?”

“The knife didn't make that mark, Inspector Hanken. No way, not for a minute, uh-uh, and forget it.”

Hanken stared at her. He tried to assimilate the information. More, he wondered if she'd made a mistake. She looked so scatty-her lab coat had half its hem ripped out and a coffee stain on the front of it-that it was hardly beyond the realm of possibility that she was less than proficient in her own line of work.

Amber Kubowsky apparently not only saw the doubt on his face but also understood the necessity for dispelling it. When she went on, she'd become perfect science, speaking in terms of x-rays, blade widths, angles, and micro-millimeters. She didn't complete her remarks until she was certain he understood the import of what she was saying: The tip of the weapon that had pierced Terry Cole's back, chipped his scapula, and scored the bone was shaped unlike the tip of any of the Swiss Army knife's blades. While the knife blades’ tips were pointed-obviously, because how could they be knife blades if they weren't pointed, she asked reasonably-they broadened out at an entirely different angle from the weapon that had marked the bone in Terry Cole's back.

Hanken whistled tonelessly She'd given an impressive recitation, but he had to ask. “Are you sure?”

“I'd swear to it, Inspector. We would've all missed it if I didn't have this theory about x-rays and microscopes that I won't go into at the moment.”

“But the knife made the other wounds on the body?”

“Except for the scapula wound. Yes. That's right.”

She had other information to impart as well. And she took him to another area of the lab, where she held forth on the topic of a pewterlike smear she'd also been asked to evaluate.

When he'd heard what Amber Kubowsky had to say on this final subject, Hanken headed immediately for a phone. It was time to track down Lynley.

Hanken rang the other DI's mobile and found Lynley in the casualty ward of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Lynley put him into the picture tersely: Vi Nevin had been brutally attacked in the maisonette that she and Nicola Maiden had shared.

“What's her condition?”

There was noise in the background, someone shouting, “Over here!” and the increasingly loud howl of an ambulance's double-note siren.

“Thomas?” Hanken raised his voice. “What's her condition? Have you got anything from her?”

“Nothing,” Lynley finally replied from London. “We haven't been able to manage a statement yet. We can't even get close. They've been working on her for an hour.”

“What do you think? Related to the case, what's happened?”

“I'd say that's likely.” Lynley went on to catalogue what he'd learned since their last conversation, beginning with his interview of Shelly Platt, continuing with a precis of his experience at MKR Financial Management, and ending with his meeting with Sir Adrian Beattie and his wife. “So we've managed to unearth the London lover, but he's got an alibi-still to be confirmed, by the way. Even if he hadn't an alibi, I have to say I can't see him slogging across the moors to knife one victim and chase down the other. He must be over seventy.”

“So Upman was telling the truth,” Hanken said, “at least in regard to the pager and those phone calls that the Maiden girl took while she was at work.”

“It looks that way, Peter. But Beattie claims there had to be someone in Derbyshire supplying her with money, or she wouldn't have gone there in the first place.”

“Upman can't be making that much from his divorcees. He said he wasn't in London in May, by the way. He said his diary could prove it.”

“What about Britton?”

“He's still on my list. I got waylaid by the Swiss Army knife.” Hanken brought Lynley up-to-date in that respect, adding the news about the scapula wound. Another weapon, he told Lynley, had evidently been used upon the boy.

“Another knife?”

“Possibly. And Maiden's got one. He even produced it for my inspection.”

“You aren't thinking Andy's fool enough to show you one of the murder weapons. Peter, he's a cop, not a cretin.”

“Wait. When I saw it at first I didn't think Maiden's knife could have been used on the boy because the blades are too short. But I was thinking of the other wounds then, not the blow to the scapula. How far is the scapula beneath the skin anyway? And if Kubowsky dismissed one Swiss Army knife for the scapula wound, does it follow that none other could have done the job?”

“We're back to motive, Peter. Andy hasn't got one. But every other man in her life-not to mention one or two women-has.”

“Don't be so quick to dismiss him,” Hanken objected, “because there's more. Listen to this. I've identification on the substance we found on that odd chrome cylinder from the boot of her car. What d'you expect it is?”

“Tell me.”

“Semen. And there were two other semen deposits on it as well. We've two from secretors-that's counting the one you and I saw-and the other not. The only thing Kubowsky couldn't tell me is what the damn cylinder is in the first place. I've never seen anything like it and neither has she.”

“It's a ball stretcher,” Lynley told him.

“A what?”

“Hang on, Pete.” At the other end of the line, Hanken heard the rumble of male voices with continued hospital noises as counterpoint. Lynley got back to him, saying, “She'll pull through, thank God.”

“Can you get to her?”

“Unconscious at the moment.” And then to someone else, “Round-the-clock protection. No visitors without first clearing them with me. And ask for their IDs if anyone shows up… No. I have no idea… Right.” Then he was back. “Sorry. Where was I?”

“A ball stretcher.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Hanken listened as his colleague explained the device of torture. He felt his own testicles shrink in response.

“My guess is that it rolled out of one of her cases when she was en route to or from a client while she worked for Reeve,” Lynley concluded. “It could have been in the boot of her car for months.”

Hanken reflected on this and saw another possibility. He knew Lynley would fight it, so he broached the subject with care. “Thomas, she might have used it in Derbyshire. Perhaps on someone who's not admitting it.”

“I don't see either Upman or Britton going in for the whips-and-chains routine. And Ferrer seems more likely to use something on his women rather than vice versa. Who else is there?”

“Her dad.”

“Christ. Peter, that's a bloody sick thought.”

“Isn't it just. But the whole S & M scene's sick, and from what you've just told me, its major players look normal as hell.”

“There is no way-”

“Just listen.” And Hanken reported his interview with the dead girl's parents, including Nan Maiden's interruption of that interview and Andy Maidens feeble alibi. “So who's to say beyond doubt that Nicola wasn't servicing her dad along with everyone else?”

“Peter, you can't keep reinventing the case to fit your suspicions. If she was servicing her father-which, by the way, I would go to the rack protesting-then he can't have killed her because of her lifestyle which-as you recall-was your earlier position.”

“Then you agree he has a motive?”

“I agree that you're twisting my words.” A new spate of noise then ensued: sirens and a babble of voices. It sounded to Hanken as if the other DI were conducting their conversation in the middle of a motorway. When the noise abated slightly, Lynley said, “There's still what happened to Vi Nevin to consider. What happened tonight. If that's related to the doings in Derbyshire, you've got to see that Andy Maiden isn't involved.”