Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

With an effort, he took his eyes off the letters. His face, which had appeared bloodless before, was now even more so. He said, “I don't want to think it. But it's the best possible answer if someone actually tracked her… if someone wasn't with her already… if someone didn't just stumble upon her and kill her and the boy for the sick fun of it.”

“What?” Lynley asked.

“SO10,” he said heavily, looking as if the words cost him dearly. “There were so many cases over the years, so many yobs put away. Killers, drug dealers, crime bosses. You name them, I rolled in the muck with them.”

“Andy! No,” his wife protested, apparently understanding where he was heading. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“Someone out on parole, tracking us down, hanging round long enough to get to know our movements-” He turned to her then. “You see how it could have happened, don't you? Someone out for revenge, Nancy, striking at Nick because he knew that to hurt my daughter-my girl-was to kill me in stages… to sentence me to a living death…”

Lynley said, “It's a possibility that we can't rule out, can we? Because if, as you say, your daughter had no enemies, then we're left with the single question: Who had? If you put away someone who's out on parole, Andy, we're going to need the name.”

“Jesus. There were scores.”

“The Yard can pull all your old files in London, but you can help by giving us some direction. If there's a particular investigation that stands out in your memory, you could halve our work by listing the players.”

“I've got my diaries.”

“Diaries?” Hanken asked.

“I once thought-” Maiden shook his head self-derisively. “I thought of writing after retirement. Memoirs. Ego. But the hotel came along, and I never got round to it. I've got the diaries, though. If I have a look through them, perhaps a name… a face…” He seemed to crumple then, as if the weight of responsibility for his daughter's death bore down on him heavily.

“You don't know this for certain,” Nan Maiden said. “Andy. Please. Don't do this to yourself.”

Hanken said, “We'll follow whatever leads turn up. So if-”

“Then follow Julian.” Nan Maiden spoke as if determined to prove that there were other avenues to explore beyond the one that led to her husband's past.

Maiden said, “Nancy. Don't.”

“Julian?” Lynley said.

Julian Britton, Nan told them. He'd just become engaged to Nicola. She wasn't suggesting him as a suspect, but if the police were looking for leads, then they certainly would want to talk to Julian. Nicola had been with him the night before she left for her camping trip. She might have said something to Julian-or done something even-that would result in another possibility for the police to explore in their investigation.

It was a reasonable enough suggestion, Lynley thought. He jotted down Julian's name and address. Nan Maiden supplied the information.

For his part, Hanken brooded. And he said nothing more until he and Lynley had returned to the car. “It may all be a blind, you know.” He switched on the ignition, reversed out of their parking space, and turned the car to face Maiden Hall. There, he let the engine idle while he studied the old limestone structure.

“What?” Lynley asked.

“SO10. This business of someone from his past. It's a bit too convenient, wouldn't you say?”

“Convenient is an odd choice of words to describe a lead and a potential suspect,” Lynley said. “Unless you yourself already suspect…” He looked towards the Hall. “Exactly what is it that you suspect, Peter?”

“D'you know the White Peak?” Hanken asked abruptly. “It runs from Buxton to Ashbourne. From Matlock to Castleton. We've got dales, we've got moors, we've got trails, we've got hills. This”-with a gesture at the environment-“is part of it. So's the road we came in on, for that matter.”

“And?”

Hanken turned in his seat to face Lynley squarely. “And in all this vast amount of space, on last Tuesday night-or Wednesday morning if we want to believe him-Andy Maiden managed to find his daughter's car hidden out of sight behind a stone wall. What would you say the odds are on that?”

Lynley looked to the building, to its windows reflecting the last of the daylight like row upon row of shielded eyes. “Why didn't you tell me?” he asked the other DI.

“I didn't think of it,” Hanken said. “Not till our boy brought up SO 10. Not till our Andy got caught out keeping the truth from his wife.”

“He wanted to spare her as long as he could. What man wouldn't?” Lynley asked.

“A man with nothing on his conscience,” Hanken said.

Showered and changed into the most comfortable elastic-waisted trousers that she possessed, Barbara was back to grazing-on leftover take-away pork fried rice which, unheated, wasn't about to make it onto anyone's culinary top ten-when Nkata arrived. He announced himself with two sharp raps on the door. She swung it open, take-away container in hand, and leveled a chopstick at him.

“Your watch stopped or something? What goes for five minutes in your book, Winston?”

He stepped inside unbidden and flashed her the full wattage of his smile. “Sorry. Got another page before I could clear out. The guv. I had to phone him first.”

“Of course. Can't keep his lordship waiting.”

Nkata let the comment go. “Damned lucky that service is slow at the pub. I should've been out of there thirty minutes ago, which would've put me too close to Shoreditch to come back here for you. Funny, isn't it? Like my mum always says. Things work out exactly the way they're s'posed to.”

Barbara stared at him, wordless. She felt nonplused. She wanted to tell him off for the note he'd left her-and for the letter C so prominent on it-but his air of ease stopped her. She couldn't explain his nonchalance any more than she could explain his presence inside her dwelling. He could at least look bloody uncomfortable, she decided.

“We got two bodies in Derbyshire and a London angle that needs playing on the case,” Nkata said. He sketched in the details: a woman, a young man, a former SO 10 officer, anonymous letters assembled from newsprint, a threatening note written by hand. “I got to get over to an address in Shoreditch where this dead bloke might've come from,” he told her. “If someone's there who can i.d. the body, I'm on my way back to Buxton in the morning. But the Yard end of things'll need looking into. The spector just told me to set that up. That's why he paged.”

Barbara couldn't hide her eagerness when she said, “Lynley asked for me?”

Nkata's glance shifted away for an instant, but that was enough. Her spirits came to earth.

“I see.” She carried her take-away container to the kitchen work top. The rice sat heavily on her stomach. Its flavour clung to her tongue like fur. “If he doesn't know you're asking me, Winston, I can refuse with no one the wiser, can't I? You can pass me by and get someone else.”

“Can do, sure,” Nkata said. “I can check the rota. Or I can wait till morning and let the super make the call. But doing all that leaves you free to get assigned to Stewart, Hale, or MacPherson, doesn't it? And I didn't much think you'd want to go that way if you didn't have to.” He left unsaid what was legend in CID: Barbara's failure to establish a working relationship with the DIs he'd mentioned, her subsequent return to uniform from which she had only been elevated by her partnership with Lynley.

Barbara swung around, perplexed by what appeared to be the other DCs inexplicable generosity. Another man in his position would have left her hanging in the wind, the better to improve his own position, and to hell with what she might have to face. That Nkata wasn't doing so made her doubly cautious.