Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

He himself had seen that Tideswell abutted the eastern edge of Calder Moor, and the killer-vastly more familiar with the White Peak than Lynley-would have known that as well. So in possession of a jacket with an incriminating hole that would have told the tale of the crime in short order had it been found on the scene, he had to be rid of it as soon as possible. What could have been easier than stopping at the Black Angel Hotel on his way home from Calder Moor, knowing, as an habitué of the bar, that coats and jackets accumulated for whole seasons before anyone thought to have a look at them.

But could Julian Britton have managed to hang up the leather jacket in the entrance without being seen by anyone inside? It was possible, Lynley thought. Risky as the devil, but possible.

And at this point Lynley was willing to accept that which was possible. It kept that which was probable out of his thoughts.

Barbara leaned forward in her chair, saying, “You know him? Matthew King-Ryder. You know him?” and trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

“Terry,” Vi murmured.

Her eyelids were getting heavy. But Barbara pressed the young woman anyway, against the rising protestations of Shelly Platt. “Terry knew Matthew King-Ryder? How?”

“Music” Vi said.

Barbara felt immediately deflated. Damn, she thought. Terry Cole, the Chandler music, and Matthew King-Ryder. There was nothing new in this. They were nowhere again.

Then Vi said, “Found it in the Albert Hall, did Terry.”

Barbara's eyebrows knotted. “The Albert Hall? Terry found the music there?”

“Under a seat.”

Barbara was gobsmacked. She tried to get her mind round what Vi Nevin was telling her even as Vi continued to tell her.

In the course of his job as card boy, Terry put cards regularly in South Kensington phone boxes. He always did this work at night, since there was less likelihood of finding himself on the receiving end of police aggro after dark. He'd been on his regular rounds in the neighbourhood of Queen's Gate, when the phone in one of the boxes rang.

“On the corner of Elvaston Place and one of the mewses, this was,” Vi said.

For a lark, Terry answered to hear a male voice say, “The package is in the Albert Hall. Circle Q, Row 7, Seat 19,” after which the line went dead.

The mysterious nature of the call piqued Terry's interest. The word package -with its intimations of either a money drop, a drug drop, or a dead letter box-clinched the deal. Since he was so close to Kensington Gore, where the Royal Albert Hall overlooked the south border of Hyde Park, Terry went to investigate. A concert audience was just leaving, so the Hall was open. He tracked down the seat high in one of the balconies and found a package of music beneath it.

The Chandler music, Barbara thought. But what the bloody hell was it doing there?

He thought at first that he'd been sent off on a fool's errand intended for whatever fool was supposed to answer that phone on the corner of Elvaston Place. And when he'd met up with Vi to collect a fresh batch of phone box cards, he'd told her about his brief adventure.

“I thought there might be money to be made,” Vi told Barbara. “So did Nikki when we told her about it.”

Shelly dropped Vis hand abruptly, saying, “I don't want to hear nothing about that bitch.”

To which Vi replied, “Come on, Shell. She's dead.”

Shelly flounced over to the chair she'd been sitting on earlier. She plopped down and began to sulk, arms crossed over her bony chest. Barbara speculated briefly on the uneasy future of a relationship between two women when one of them was so perilously dependent. Vi ignored the demonstration of pique.

They all had ambitions, she told Barbara. Terry had his Destination Art and Vi and Nikki had plans to start up a first class escort business. They also had a need to support themselves once Nikki broke with Adrian Beattie. Both operations depended upon an infusion of cash, and the music looked like a potential source of it. “See, I remembered when Sotheby's-or whoever it was-was set to auction a piece by Lennon and McCartney. And that was just one single sheet that was supposed to fetch a few thousand quid. This was a whole packet of music. I said Terry ought to try to sell it. Nikki offered to do the research and find the right auction house. We'd split the money when the music sold.”

“But why cut you in?” Barbara asked. “You and Nikki. It was Terry's find, after all.”

“Yeah. But he was soft on Nikki,” Vi said simply. “He wanted to impress her. This was the way.”

Barbara knew the rest. Neil Sitwell at Bowers had opened Terry's eyes to copyright law. He'd handed over the address for 31-32 Soho Square and informed the boy that King-Ryder Productions would put him in touch with the Chandler solicitors. Terry had gone to Matthew King-Ryder with the music in hand. Matthew King-Ryder had seen it and had realised how he could use it to make himself the fortune that his father's will denied him. But why not just buy the music from the boy right then? she wondered. Why kill him to get it? Better yet, why not just buy the rights to the music from the Chandler family? If the production that resulted from the music was anything like the King-Ryder/Chandler productions from the past, there would have been plenty of lolly to go round in royalties even if fifty percent of it went to the Chandlers.

Vi was saying “-couldn't get the name,” when Barbara roused herself from her thoughts. She said, “What? Sorry. What did you say?”

“Matthew King-Ryder didn't give Terry the solicitor's name. Didn't even give him a chance to ask for it. He booted him out of his office as soon as he saw what Terry'd brought with him.”

“When he saw the music.”

She nodded. “Terry said he called security. Two guards came up straightaway and threw him out.”

“But Terry had gone there just for the Chandler solicitor's address, hadn't he? That's all he wanted from Matthew King-Ryder? He didn't want money? A reward or something?”

“Money's what we wanted the Chandlers to give him. Once we knew the music couldn't be auctioned.”

A nurse came into the room then, a small square tray in her hand. A hypodermic needle lay on it. Time for pain medication, the woman said.

“One last question,” Barbara said. “Why did Terry go up to Derbyshire on Tuesday?”

“Because I asked him to,” Vi said. “Nikki thought I was being a fool about Shelly-” Here the other woman raised her head. Vi spoke to her rather than to Barbara. “She kept sending these letters and hanging about and I was getting scared.”

Shelly raised a thin hand and pointed to her chest. “Of me?” she asked. “You 'as scared of me?”

“Nikki laughed them off when I told her about them. I thought if she saw them herself, we could plan to take care of Shelly some way. I wrote Nikki a note and asked Terry to take it and the letters up to her. Like I said, he was soft on her. Any excuse to see her. You know what I mean.”

The nurse interposed at this juncture, saying, “I really must insist,” and holding up the syringe.

“Yeah, okay,” Vi Nevin said.

Barbara stopped for groceries on her way back to Chalk Farm, so it was after nine by the time she got home. She unpacked her booty and stashed it within the cupboards and the munchkin-size fridge of her bungalow. All the time in her mind she picked through the information that Vi Nevin had given her. Somewhere within their interview was buried the key to everything that had happened: not only in Derbyshire but also in London. Surely, she thought, a mere assembling of the information in the right order would tell her what she needed to know.

With a plate of reheatable rogan josh from the grocery's precooked section-of which Barbara had quickly become an habitué nonpareil when she'd moved to the neighbourhood-she settled herself at her tiny dining table next to the bungalow's front window. She accompanied her meal with a lukewarm Bass and laid her notebook next to the coffee mug from which she was reduced to drinking, since several days of crockery, cutlery, and glassware had piled in her kitchen's diminutive sink. She took a gulp of the ale, forked up a portion of the lamb, and flipped to the notes from her interview with Vi Nevin.