Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Beneath the bandages, what could be seen of Vi Nevin's swollen face was her eyes, a small portion of her forehead, and a stitched-up lower lip. She looked like a victim of the sort of explosive that threw off shrapnel. She said in a voice so faint that Barbara strained to hear it, “Had a punter coming. Old bloke, this is. Likes honey on him. I coat him first… You know? Then I lick it off.”

What a treat, Barbara thought. She said, “Right. You say honey? Brilliant. Go on.”

Vi Nevin did so. She said she'd readied herself for her appointment in the schoolgirl costume that her client preferred. But when she'd brought out the honey jar, she'd realised that there wouldn't be enough to baste all the body parts he usually requested. “Plenty for the prong,” Vi said with the frankness of a professional. “But if he wanted more, I needed to have it to hand.”

“I've got the picture,” Barbara told her.

At the head of the bed, Shelly eased a skinny thigh onto the mattress. She said, “I c'n tell it, Vi. You'll wear yourself out.”

Vi shook her head and continued the story. There was little enough of it.

She'd popped out for the honey before her client's arrival. When she'd returned, she'd transferred the honey into its regular jug and she'd assembled a tray with the linens and other assorted goodies-all of which appeared to be either edible or potable-that she used in her regular sessions with the man. She'd been carrying the tray into the sitting room, when she'd heard a sound from one of the bedrooms upstairs.

All right, Barbara thought. Her interpretation of the pictures taken at the Fulham crime scene was about to be confirmed. But to be absolutely sure, she clarified with “Was it your client? Had he arrived ahead of you?”

“Not him,” Vi murmured.

Shelly said to Barbara, “You c'n see she's knackered. That's enough for now.”

“Hang on,” Barbara told her. “So a bloke was upstairs, but he wasn't a client? Then how'd he get in? You hadn't bolted the door?”

Vi raised the hand that Shelly wasn't clutching. It rose two inches off the bed and fell back. She reminded Barbara, “Only popped out for honey Ten minutes is all.” So she saw no reason to bolt the door. When she heard the noise above stairs, she explained, she went to investigate and found a bloke in her bedroom. The room itself was in shambles.

“You saw him?”

Only a shadowy glimpse of him as he lunged at her, Vi explained.

Fine, Barbara thought, because a glimpse might well do it. She said, “That's good. That's brilliant, then. Tell me what you can. Anything at all. A detail. A scar. A mark. Anything,” and she summoned into her mind the image of Matthew King-Ryder's face to match it up with whatever Vi Nevin said.

But what Vi gave her was a description of Everyman: medium height, medium build, brown hair, clear skin. And while it fitted

Matthew King-Ryder to a T, it also fitted at least seventy percent of the male population.

“Too fast,” Vi breathed. “Happened too fast.”

“But it wasn't the client you'd been expecting? You do know that?”

Vis lips curved, and she winced as they pulled against their stitches. “Eighty-one, that bloke is. On his best day… hardly can manage the stairs.”

“And it wasn't Martin Reeve?”

She shook her head.

“One of your other clients? An old boyfriend, perhaps?”

“She said -” Shelly Platt interrupted hotly.

“I'm clearing the decks,” Barbara told her. “It's the only way. You want us to nick whoever assaulted her, right?”

Shelly grumbled and petted Vis shoulder. Barbara tapped the pen against her notebook and considered their options.

They could hardly cart Vi Nevin to an identity parade, and even if that were possible, they had-at the moment-no reason in hell to trot Matthew King-Ryder into the local nick to stand in one. So they needed a picture, but it would have to come from a newspaper or a magazine. Or from King-Ryder Productions on some sort of spurious excuse. Because one hint that they were on to him, and King-Ryder would weigh down his long bow and arrows with concrete and dump them into the Thames faster than you could say Robin Hood's Merry Men.

But getting a photo was going to take some time because they needed the real thing-sharp and clear-and not something sent over to the hospital via fax. And fax or otherwise, where the hell were they going to get a photo of Matthew King-Ryder at-here Barbara looked at her watch-half past seven on a Sunday evening? There was no way. It was stab-in-the-dark time. She drew a deep breath and took the plunge. “D'you know a bloke called Matthew King-Ryder by any chance?”

Vi said the completely unexpected. “Yes.”

Lynley held the jacket by its satin lining. It had doubtless been touched by a dozen people since being removed from Terry Cole's body on Tuesday night. But it had been touched by the killer as well, and if he hadn't realised that fingerprints could be lifted from leather nearly as easily as they could be lifted from glass or painted wood, there was an excellent chance that he'd left an unintentional calling card upon the garment.

Once the proprietor of the Black Angel understood the import of Lynley's request, he fetched all the employees to the bar for some questions post haste. He offered the inspector tea, coffee, or other refreshment to go along with his queries, seeking to be helpful with the sort of anxiety to please that generally struck people who found themselves inadvertently living on the county line between murder and respectability. Lynley demurred at all refreshment. He just wanted some information, he said.

Showing the jacket to the hotels proprietor and its employees didn't get him anywhere however. One jacket was much like another to them. None could say how or when the garment that Lynley was holding had appeared at the hotel. They made suitable noises of horror and aversion when he pointed out the copious amount of dried blood on the lining and the hole in the back, and while they looked at him with properly mournful expressions when he mentioned the two recent deaths on Calder Moor, not an eyelash among them so much as fluttered at the suggestion that a killer might have been in their midst.

“I reckon someone left that thing here. Tha's what happened. No mistake about it,” the barmaid said.

“Coats hanging on the porch rack all winter long,” one of the room maids added. “I never take notice of them one day to the next.”

“But that's just it,” Lynley said. “It isn't winter. And until today, I dare say there hasn't been rain enough for macs, jackets, or coats.”

“So what s'r point?” the proprietor said.

“How could all of you fail to notice a leather jacket on a coat rack if the leather jacket is hanging there alone?”

The ten employees who were gathered in the bar shifted about, looked sheepish, or appeared regretful. But no one could shed any light on the jacket or how it had come to be there. They came in to work through the back door, not through the front, they told him. They left the same way. So they wouldn't have even seen the coat rack in the course of their normal workdays. Besides, things often got left behind at the Black Angel Hotel: umbrellas, walking sticks, rain gear, rucksacks, maps. Everything ended up in lost property, and until things got there, no one paid them much mind.

Lynley decided on a full frontal approach. Were they acquainted with the Britton family? he wanted to know. Would they recognise Julian Britton if they saw him?

The proprietor spoke for everyone. “We all know the Brittons at the Black Angel.”

“Did any of you see Julian on Tuesday night?”

But no one had.

Lynley dismissed them. He asked for a bag in which to stow the jacket, and while one was being fetched for him, he walked to the window, watched the rain fall, and thought about Tideswell, the Black Angel, and the crime.