Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“And Vi Nevin?” Lynley enquired. “How does she fit into the picture, Havers?”

Her face grew even brighter. “King-Ryder thought Vi had the music. He hadn't found it at the flat. He hadn't found it when he followed Terry Cole and offed him and tore that camp site apart looking for it. So he came back to London and paid a call on Vi Nevin's flat when she was out. He was tearing it apart looking for that music when she surprised him.”

“That flat was destroyed. It wasn't searched, Havers.”

“No way, Inspector. The pictures show a search. Look at them again. Things're flung round and opened up and shoved onto the floor. But if someone wanted to put Vi out of business, he'd spray-paint the walls. He'd slice up the furniture and cut up the carpets and punch holes in the doors.”

“And he'd batter her face in,” Lynley injected. “Which is what Reeve did.”

“King-Ryder did it. She'd seen him. Or at least he thought she'd seen him. And he couldn't take a chance that she hadn't. For all he knew, she was wise to the music's existence too. because she knew Terry as well. At any rate, what does it matter? Let's haul him in and hold his feet to the flame.” For the first time, she seemed to see the suitcase that stood in the doorway. She said, “Where're you going anyway?”

“To make an arrest. Because while you were larking round London, DC Nkata-in compliance with orders-was doing the footwork he'd been assigned to in Islington. And what he's uncovered has sod all to do with Matthew King-Ryder or anyone else with that surname.”

Havers blanched. Next to her Helen set a sheet of music, which she'd been inspecting, onto the pile. She raised a cautionary hand, resting it at the base of her throat. Lynley recognised the gesture but ignored it.

He said to Havers, “You were given an assignment.”

“I got the warrant, Inspector. I set up a team for the search, and I met them. I told them what they-”

“You were directed to be a part of that team, Havers.”

“But the thing is that I believed… I had this gut feeling-”

“No. There is no thing. There is no gut feeling. Not in your position.”

Helen said, “Tommy…”

He said, “No. Forget it. It's done. You've defied me every inch of the way, Havers. You're off the case.”

“But-”

“Do you want chapter and verse?”

“Tommy.” Helen reached in his direction. He could see that she wanted to intercede between them. She so hated his anger. For her sake, he did his best to control it.

“Anyone else in your position-demoted, having barely escaped criminal prosecution-and with your history of failure in CID-”

“That's low.” Havers’ words sounded faint.

“-would have toed every line that was drawn from the instant AC Hillier pronounced sentence.”

“Hillier's a pig. You know it.”

“Anyone else,” he went doggedly on, “would have dotted every i in sight and double-crossed every t for good measure. In your case, all that was asked of you was a bit of research through some SO 10 cases, research which you had to be ordered back to on more than one occasion in the last few days.”

“But I did it. You got the report. I did it.”

“And after that you went your own way.”

“Because I saw those pictures. In your office. This morning. I saw that the flat in Fulham had been searched, and I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't hear me out. So what could I do?” She didn't wait for an answer, likely knowing what he would say. “And when Mrs. Baden handed over that music and I saw who'd written it, I knew we'd found our man, Inspector. All right. I should have gone with the team to Notting Hill. You told me to go, and I didn't. But can't you please look at how much time I ended up saving us? You're about to trot back up to Derbyshire, aren't you? I've saved you the trip.”

Lynley blinked. He said, “Havers, do you actually think I give credence to this nonsense?”

Nonsense. She mouthed the word rather than to speak it.

Helen looked from one of them to the other. She dropped her hand. Expression regretful, she reached for a sheet of the music. Havers looked at her, which sparked Lynley's anger. He wouldn't have his wife put into the middle.

“Report to Webberly in the morning,” he told Havers. “Whatever your next assignment is, get it from him.”

“You aren't even looking at what's in front of you,” Havers said, but she no longer sounded argumentative or defiant, merely mystified. Which angered him more.

“Do you need a map out of here, Barbara?” he asked her.

“Tommy!” Helen cried.

“Sod you,” Havers said.

She rose from the sofa with a fair amount of dignity. She took up her tattered bag. As she moved past the coffee table and sailed out of the room, five sheets from the Chandler music fluttered to the floor.

The Derbyshire weather matched DI Peter Hanken's mood: grim. While a silver sky dissolved into rain, he navigated the road between Buxton and Bakewell, wondering what it meant that a black leather jacket was missing from the evidence taken from Nine Sisters Henge. The missing rain gear had been easy to explain. The missing jacket was not. For a single killer did not need two articles of clothing to cover up the blood from a chopped-up victim.

He hadn't made the search for Terry Cole's missing leather jacket entirely unassisted. DC Mott had been with him, a flapjack in his hand. As evidence officer, Mott's presence was essential. But he did little enough to help with the search. Instead, he munched loudly and appreciatively with much smacking of lips and pronounced that he'd “never seen no black leather jacket, Guv,” throughout Hanken's inspection.

Mott's record keeping had been vindicated. There was no jacket. That message transmitted to London, Hanken set out for Bakewell and Broughton Manor. Jacket or no, there was still Julian Britton to clear off or keep on their list of suspects.

As Hanken cruised over the bridge that spanned the River Wye, he unexpectedly entered another century. Despite the rain that was continuing to fall unabated like a harbinger of grief to come, a fierce battle was going on round the manor house. On the hillside that descended to the river, five or six dozen Royalist soldiers, wearing the varied colours of the Monarch and the nobility, were flailing swords with an equal number of armoured and pot-helmeted Parliamentarians. On the meadow beneath them, more armoured soldiers were rolling cannon into position, while on a far slope a pistol-wielding division of helmeted infantry made for the south gate of the manor house with a battering ram trundling along among them.

The Cavaliers and the Roundheads were re-fighting a battle of the Civil War, Hanken concluded. Julian Britton was engaged in yet another means of raising money for the restoration of his home.

A seventeenth-century milkmaid standing beneath a Burberry umbrella waved Hanken to a makeshift car park a short distance from the house. There, various other players in the reenactment drama were milling about in the guise of Royals, peasants, farmers, noblemen, surgeons, and musketeers. Eating from a soup tin in the door of a caravan, ill-fated King Charles-a bloody bandage round his head-chatted up a wench who was carrying a basket of bread getting soaked by the rain. Not far away, a black-garbed Oliver Cromwell struggled out of his armour, attempting the feat without untying the lacing. Dogs and children dashed in and out of the crowd, while a snack stall did a thriving business in whatever they could serve that was hot and steaming.

Hanken parked and asked where the Brittons were hiding. He was directed to a viewing area within the third of the manor's ruined gardens. There, on the southwest side of the house, a stalwart crowd huddled on makeshift stands and deck chairs to watch the unfolding reenactment from beneath a motley mushrooming of umbrellas.