Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Curious, Nan set her packages on the bed and crossed the room to the chest. There was nothing on top of it to make such a noise, just a vase of drooping bladder campion and nightshade collected on a walk through Padley Gorge. These wildflowers were accompanied by a hair brush and comb, three bottles of scent, and a small beanbag flamingo with bright pink legs and large yellow feet.

With a glance towards the open bedroom door as if she were engaged in a surreptitious search, Nan slid open the top drawer of the chest. As she did so, the buzzing sounded for a third time. Her fingers moved in the direction of the noise. She found a small plastic square vibrating beneath a stack of knickers.

Nan carried this plastic square to the bed, sat, and switched on the bedside lamp. She examined what she'd taken from the drawer. It was Nicola's pager. On the top of it were two small buttons, one grey and one black. Across the end of it a thin screen held a single brief message: one page.

The buzzer sounded again, startling Nan Maiden. She pushed down one of the two buttons in response. The thin screen shifted to another message, this a telephone number with an area code that Nan recognised from central London.

She swallowed. She stared hard at the number. She realised that whoever had paged her daughter had no idea that Nicola was dead. It was this thought that took her automatically to the telephone in order to make a reply. But it was another set of thoughts that took her to a telephone in the reception area of Maiden Hall when she could have as easily phoned the London number from the bedroom that she shared with Andy.

She drew a long breath. She wondered if she would have the words. She considered the possibility that having the words would make no difference to anyone. But she didn't want to think about that. She just wanted to phone.

Rapidly, she punched in the numbers. She waited and waited for the connection to be made, till she became light-headed and realised that she was holding her breath. Finally, with a click, a phone somewhere in London began sounding. Double-ring, double-ring. Nan counted eight of them. She had started to think she'd misdialled the number, when she finally heard a man's gruff voice.

He answered in the old way, marking his generation: He gave the last four digits of his number. And because of that fact, and because his way of answering reminded her so much of her own father, Nan heard herself saying what she would not have believed herself capable of saying an hour earlier. A whisper only, “Nicola here.”

“Oh, so it's Nicola tonight, is it?” he demanded. “Where the hell've you been? I paged you over an hour ago.”

“Sorry.” And in her daughters abbreviated style of talking, “What's up?”

“Nothing, and you damn well know it. What've you decided? Have you changed your mind? You can do that, you know. All will be forgiven. When're you back?”

“Yes,” Nan whispered. “I've decided yes.”

“Thank God.” It was fervent. “Oh Jesus. Thank God. Damn. It's become impossible, Nikki. I'm missing you too much. Tell me at once when you're coming back.”

“Soon.” The whisper.

“How soon? Tell me.”

“I'll phone you.”

“No! Good God. Are you mad? Margaret and Molly are here this week. Wait for the page.”

She hesitated. “Of course.”

“Darling, have I made you angry?”

She said nothing.

“I have done, haven't I? Forgive me. I didn't mean to.”

She said nothing.

Then the voice altered, becoming suddenly and bizarrely childlike. “Oh Nikki. Pretty Nikki of mine. Say you're not angry. Say something to me, darling.”

She said nothing.

“I know what you're like when I've made you angry. I'm a wicked boy, aren't I?”

She said nothing.

“Yes. I know. I don't deserve you. I'm wicked, and I must take the medicine. You've got my medicine, haven't you, Nikki? And I must take it. Yes, I must.”

Nan's stomach heaved. She cried out, “Who are you? Tell me your name!”

A muted gasp was the answer. The line went dead.

At the end of her third hour at the computer, Barbara Havers knew she had two alternatives. She could continue with the SO 10 files in CRIS and possibly end up blind. Or she could take a break. She chose the latter option. She flipped her notebook closed, made an exit from the search she'd been conducting, and enquired where the nearest office was in which she could indulge her habit. With New Scotland Yard giving itself ever more over into the eager embrace of ASH, she was told that everyone on this particular floor was abstemious.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered. There was nothing for it but to backslide into behaviour from her schooldays. She slouched towards the nearest stairwell and plunked her squat body onto the stairs, where she lit up, inhaled, and held the wonderful, noxious fumes within her lungs for so long that her eyeballs felt ready to pop from their sockets. Pure bliss, she thought. Life didn't get much better than a fag after three hours away from the weed.

The morning had gained her nothing of scintillating substance. On CRIS she'd discovered that Detective Inspector Andrew Maiden had served with the force for thirty years, and he'd spent the last twenty with SO 10, where only

Inspector Javert could have had a more resplendent career. His record of arrests was transcendent. The convictions that followed those arrests were themselves a marvel of British jurisprudence. But those two facts created a nightmare for anyone looking into his history undercover.

Maiden's convicts had gone through the system and ended up being detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in virtually every one of Her Majesty's prisons within the UK. And while the files gave details of undercover operations-most of them having been named by someone with a distinct taste for loony acronyms, she found-and complete reports into investigations, interrogations, arrests, and charges, the information became sketchy when it came to prison terms and sketchier still in the area of parole. If a ticket-of-leave man was on the streets and after the bloke who caused the silver bracelets to be slapped on him in the first place, he wasn't going to be easy to find.

Barbara sighed, yawned, and tapped her cigarette against the sole of her shoe, dislodging ash onto the step beneath her. She'd abjured her trademark high-top red trainers in deference to her new position-all spit and polish for AC Hillier should he happen past, eager to give her another wigging-and she found that her feet had begun to throb, so unaccustomed had they become to formal footwear. Indeed, sitting on the step in the stairwell, she became aware of entire areas of her body that were screaming discomfort and had doubtless been doing so for most of the morning: Her skirt felt as if an anaconda had taken position round her hips, her jacket appeared to be chewing large bites from her underarms, and her tights had dug so far into her crotch that an episiotomy was going to be unnecessary should she ever be in the position to give birth.

She'd never been one for high fashion during her working hours, choosing drawstring trousers, T-shirts, and jerseys over anything that might be construed as remotely related to haute couture. And used to seeing her more casually arrayed, more than one person this day had encountered Barbara with a raised eyebrow or a stifled grin.

Among this lot had been her near neighbours, whom Barbara had encountered not twenty-five yards from her own front door. Tay-mullah Azhar and his daughter had been loading themselves into Azhar's spotless Fiat when Barbara trundled round the corner of the house that morning, fighting her notebook into her shoulder bag, a half-smoked fag dangling from her lips. She hadn't been aware of them at first, not till Hadiyyah called out happily, “Barbara! Hullo, hullo! Good morning! You shouldn't smoke so awfully much. It'll make your lungs all black and nasty if you don't stop. We learned that in school. We saw pictures and everything. Did I tell you that already? You look quite nice.”