Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“But he also knows it's somewhere.”

True, Barbara thought. But where and with whom? Who was it that King-Ryder didn't know who would convince the man that the music had switched hands more than once and that he-King-Ryder-would have to come forward to get that music? And how the hell could the act of just coming forward for some music-which he could deny knowing about once he saw it-also serve as the act that betrayed him as a killer?

Bloody hell, Barbara thought. It felt as if her brain were undergoing nuclear meltdown. What she needed was to talk to another professional. What she needed was a flaming good confab with someone who could not only see all the tentacles of this octopus crime but could also step forward, offer the solution, be part of the solution, and defend himself against King-Ryder should everything go to hell in an instant.

Inspector Lynley was the obvious choice. But he was out of the question. So she needed someone like him. She needed his clone. She needed-Barbara caught herself up and smiled. “Of course,” she said.

Helen raised an eyebrow. “You've got an idea?”

“I've got a bloody inspiration.”

It wasn't until one o'clock that Nan Maiden realised her husband was missing. She'd been occupied with putting the ground floor of Maiden Hall back in order, and she'd been making such an effort to act as if unexpected police searches were part of the normal routine that she hadn't noticed when Andy disappeared.

When he wasn't in the house, she first assumed he was in the grounds. But when she asked one of the kitchen boys to take a message out to Mr. Maiden offering him lunch, the boy told her that Andy had gone off in the Land-Rover not half an hour before.

“Oh. I see,” Nan said, and she tried to look as if this were perfectly reasonable behaviour under the circumstances. She even tried to tell herself as much: because it was inconceivable that Andy would have gone off without a word to her after what they both had been through.

She'd said, “A search?” to DI Hanken's unmoving face. “But a search for what? We've got nothing… we're hiding nothing… you'll find nothing…”

“Love,” Andy had said. He'd asked to see the search warrant and, once he'd seen it, he'd handed it back. “Go on, then,” he told Hanken.

Nan wouldn't consider what they were looking for. She wouldn't consider what their presence meant. When they left empty-handed, she felt such relief that her legs wobbled and she had to sit quickly or risk crumpling to the floor.

Her easing of nerves at the failure of the police to find what they were looking for quickly gave way to anxiety, however, when she learned that Andy was gone. Hanging over their heads was his declared willingness to find someone in the country who would give him a polygraph.

That's where he's gone, Nan decided. He's found someone to give him that bloody test. This search of the Hall pushed him to it. He means to have the test and prove himself to everyone by having it witnessed by someone from the investigation.

She had to stop him. She had to make him see that he was playing into their hands. They'd come with a warrant to search the premises knowing that such an action would unnerve him, and it had done so. It had unnerved them both.

Nan tore at her fingernails. Had she not felt momentarily faint, she could have gone to him, she told herself. They could have talked. She could have drawn him to her and soothed his sore conscience and-no. She would not think of that. Not of conscience. Never of conscience. She would think only of what she could do to turn the tide of her husband's intentions.

She realised that there was a single possibility.

She couldn't risk using the phone in Reception, so she went upstairs to the family floor to use the phone by their bed. She had the receiver in her hand, ready to punch in the number, when she saw the folded piece of paper on her pillow.

The message from her husband comprised one sentence. Nan Maiden read it and dropped the phone.

She didn't know where to go. She didn't know what to do. She ran from the bedroom. She clattered down the stairs with Andy's note clutched in her hand and so many voices inside her head shouting for action that she couldn't make out one coherent word that would tell her what step was the first to take.

She wanted to grab each person she saw: on the residents’ floor, in the lounge, in the kitchen, at work on the grounds. She wanted to shake them all. She wanted to shout Where is he help me what is he doing where has he gone what does it mean that he's… oh God don't tell me because I know I know I know what it means and I've always known and I don't want to hear it to face it to feel it to somehow come to terms with what he's… no no no… help me find him help me.

She found herself running across the car park before she knew she'd even gone there, and then she understood that her body had taken control of a mind that had ceased to function. Even as she realised what she was meant to do, she saw what she had already been told: The Land-Rover wasn't there. Andy had taken it himself because he'd intended to leave her powerless.

She wouldn't accept that. She spun and tore back into the hotel, where the first person she saw was one of her two Grindleford women-and why on earth had she always thought of them as the Grindleford women as if they had no names of their own?-and she accosted her.

Nan knew she looked wild. She certainly felt wild. But that couldn't matter.

She said, “Your car. Please,” which was as much as she could manage because she found that her breathing was erratic.

The woman blinked. “Mrs. Maiden? Are you ill?”

“The keys. Your car. It's Andy.”

Blessedly, that was message enough. Within moments Nan was behind the wheel of a Morris so old that its driver's seat consisted of a thin layer of stuffing covering springs.

She revved the engine and took off down the incline. Her only thought was to find him. Where he'd gone and why he'd gone there was something she would not dwell upon.

Barbara found that it was no mean feat convincing Winston Nkata to get involved. It had been one thing for him to invite her into the investigation when she had been just another DC waiting for an assignmerit while he himself trekked off to Derbyshire with Lynley. It was quite another for her to ask him to join her in a part of that same investigation once she'd been drop-kicked out of it. Her suggested little bout of hounds-chasing-the-fox wasn't authorised by their superior officer. So when she spoke to Nkata, she felt a little like Mr. Christian, while her fellow DC didn't sound much like a man who wanted to take a cruise on the Bounty.

He said, “No way, Barb. This's dodgy as hell.”

She said, “Winnie. It's a single phone call. And this's your lunch hour anyway, isn't it? Or it could be your lunch hour, couldn't it? You've got to eat, So just meet me there. We'll have a meal in the neighbourhood. We'll have anything you'd like. My treat. I promise.”

“But the guv-”

“-won't even have to know if it comes to nothing,” Barbara finished for him, and then she added, “Winnie, I need you.”

He hesitated. Barbara held her breath. Winston Nkata wasn't a man who rushed in with fools, so she gave him the time to think about her request from every possible angle. And while he did his thinking, she prayed. If Nkata didn't enter into her plan, she had no idea who else might be willing to.

He finally said, “Guv asked for a fax of your report from CRIS, Barb.”

“See?” she replied. “He's still barking up that bloody stupid tree and there's nothing in the branches. It's nowhere, Winnie. Come on. Please. You're my only hope. This is it. I know it. All I need from you is a single little phone call.”