Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

He went to squat by the fire remains, and he thought for the first time about that face and what was indicated by its burnt skin. He realised that the extent of the burning suggested that the boy had had a fairly lengthy contact with the fire. But he hadn't been held down into the flames, because if he had been, there would have been defensive wounds on his body as he struggled to free himself from someone's grasp. And according to Dr. Myles, there had been no such wounds on Terry Cole: no bruising or scratching of his hands or knuckles, no distinctive abrasions on his torso. And yet, Lynley thought, he'd been exposed to the fire long enough to be severely burnt, indeed to have his skin blackened. There seemed to be only one reasonable answer. Cole must have fallen into the fire. But how?

Lynley rested on his haunches and let his gaze wander round the circle. He saw that a second, narrower path led out of the thicket-opposite the path he'd come in on-and from his position by the fire ring, that path was in a direct line with his vision. This, then, had to be Nicola's route. He pictured the young people on Tuesday night, sitting side by side at the fire. Two killers wait outside the stone circle, unheard and unseen. They bide their time. When the moment is right, they charge towards the fire, each of them taking one of the two and making short work of them.

It was plausible, Lynley decided. But if that was what happened, he couldn't see why short work hadn't been made of Nicola Maiden. Indeed, he couldn't see how the young woman had managed to get one hundred and fifty yards from her killer before she was even attacked. While it was true that she could have fled the circle and taken off on the second path that he himself could see cutting through the trees, with the advantage of surprise on the killers' part, how had she managed to elude capture for such a distance? She was an experienced hiker, of course, but what did experience really count for in darkness, with someone in a panic and running for her life? And even if she wasn't in a panic, how could her reflexes have been so good or her understanding of what was happening so acute? Surely, it would have taken her at least five seconds to realise that harm was intended her, and that delay would have been her undoing right then, within the circle and not one hundred and fifty yards away.

Lynley frowned. He kept seeing the photograph of the boy. Those burns were important, a critical point. Those burns, he knew, told the real tale.

He reached for a stick-part of the kindling of the fire-and aimlessly shoved it into the ashes as he thought. Nearby, he spotted the first of the dried splatters of blood that had come from Terry Cole's wounds. Beyond those splatters, the dry moor grass was gouged and torn up in a zigzagging path that led to one of the standing stones.

Slowly, Lynley followed this path. It was speckled with blood for the entire distance.

There were no great gobs of gore though, and not the sort of blood evidence one would expect from someone bleeding to death from an arterial wound. In fact, as he moved along it, Lynley realised that the trail did not offer the sort of blood evidence one would expect to find from the multiple stab wounds that Terry Cole had had inflicted upon him. At the base of the standing stone, however, Lynley saw that the blood had pooled. Indeed, it had splashed onto the stone itself, leaving tiny rivulets from a height of three feet, dribbling down to the ground below.

Lynley paused here. His gaze moved from the fire ring to the beaten path. In his mind he saw the picture of the boy that the police photographer had taken, his flesh eaten black by the flames. He considered all of it point by point:

Blood by the fire in daubs and splatters.

Blood by the standing stone in pools.

Blood in rivulets from a height of three feet.

A girl running off into the night.

A chunk of limestone bashing in her skull.

Lynley narrowed his eyes and drew a slow breath. Of course, he thought. Why hadn't he seen from the first what had happened?

The address they'd been given in Fulham took Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata to a maisonette in Rostrevor Road. They expected to have to deal with a landlady, custodian, or concierge in order to gain access to Nicola Maidens rooms. But when they went through the pro forma business of ringing the bell next to the number five, they were surprised to hear a woman's voice on the speaker, asking them to identify themselves.

There was a pause once Nkata made it clear that Scotland Yard had come calling. After a moment, the disembodied voice said, “I'll be down shortly,” in the cultured accent of a woman who spent her free time reading for parts in costume dramas on the BBC. Barbara expected her to appear in full Jane Austen regalia: done up in a slender Regency dress with ringlets round her face. Some five minutes later-“Where's she coming from, exactly?” Nkata wanted to know, with a glance at his watch, “Southend-on-Sea?”-the door opened and a twelve-year-old in a vintage Mary Quant mini-dress stood before them.

“Vi Nevin,” the child said by way of introduction. “Sorry. I'd just got out of the bath and had to pull on some clothes. May I see your identification, please?”

The voice was the same as the woman's on the speaker, and coming from the pixielike creature in the doorway, it was quite disconcerting, as if a female ventriloquist were lurking somewhere nearby, throwing her voice into a pre-adolescent child for a bit of a lark. Barbara caught herself sneaking a glimpse round the door jamb to see if someone was hiding there. The expression on Vi Nevin's face said that she was used to such a reaction.

After looking over their warrant cards to her satisfaction, she handed them back and said, “Right. What can I do for you?” And when they told her that her rooms had been given as a forwarding address for the post when a student from the College of Law had moved house from Islington, she said, “There's nothing illegal in that, is there? It sounds the responsible thing to do.”

Did she know Nicola Maiden, then? Nkata asked her.

“I don't make a habit of taking up lodgings with strangers” was her reply. And then, glancing from Nkata to Barbara, “But Nikki isn't here. She hasn't been for weeks. She's up in Derbyshire till next Wednesday evening.”

Barbara saw that Nkata was reluctant to do the dubious honours of announcing death to the unsuspecting yet another time. She decided to show mercy upon him, saying, “Is there a place we can talk privately?”

Vi Nevin heard something beyond the simple question, as her eyes indicated. “Why? Have you a warrant or a decree or something? I know my rights.”

Barbara sighed inwardly. What damage the last few revelations of police malfeasance had done to public trust. She said, “I'm sure you do. But we're not here to conduct a search. We'd like to talk to you about Nicola Maiden.”

“Why? Where is she? What's she done?”

“May we come in?”

“If you tell me what you want.”

Barbara exchanged a glance with Nkata. Oh well, her look told him. There was nothing for it but to give the young woman the nasty news on her own front step. “She's dead,” Barbara informed her. “She died in the Peak District three nights ago. Now, may we come in, or should we keep talking out here in the street?”

Vi Nevin looked completely uncomprehending. “Dead?” she repeated. “Nikki's dead?. But she can't be. I spoke to her on Tuesday morning. She was going hiking. She isn't dead. She can't be.”

She searched their faces as if looking for evidence of a joke or a lie. Apparently not finding it, she stood back from the door. She said, “Please come in,” in a hushed and altered voice.

She led them up a flight of stairs to a door that stood gaping on the first floor. This gave into an L-shaped living room, where french windows opened onto a balcony. Below it, water played in a garden fountain, and a hornbeam threw late-afternoon shadows on a pattern of flagstones.