Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

At one side of the room, a sleek chrome and glass trolley held at least a dozen bottles of spirits. Vi Nevin chose an unsealed Glenlivet, and she poured herself three fingers in a tumbler. She took it neat, and any lingering doubts that Barbara had had about her age were put to rest when she tackled the whisky.

While the young woman gathered herself together, Barbara took stock of the living situation… what she could see of it. On the first floor of the maisonette were the living room, the kitchen, and a loo. The bedrooms would be above them, accessed via a staircase that rose along one wall. From where she was standing just inside the front door, she could see to the top of the stairs as well as into the kitchen. This was fitted out with a surfeit of mod cons: refrigerator with ice maker, microwave oven, espresso machine, gleaming copper-bottomed pots and pans. The work tops were granite, and the cupboards and the floor were bleached oak. Nice, Barbara thought. She wondered who was paying for it all.

She glanced at Nkata. He was taking in the low, butter-coloured sofas with their profusion of green and gold cushions tumbling across them. His gaze went from there to the luxurious ferns by the window to the large abstract oil above the fireplace. It was a bloody far cry from Loughborough estate, his expression said. He looked Barbara's way. She mouthed La-dee-dah. He grinned.

Having downed her drink, Vi Nevin appeared to do nothing more than slowly breathe. Finally, she turned to them. She smoothed back her hair-this was blonde and breast-length-and she fixed it in place with a hair band that made her look like Alice in Wonderland.

She said, “I'm sorry. No one phoned. I've not had the television on. I had no idea. I talked to her only Tuesday morning and… for God's sake, what happened?”

They gave her two pieces of information. Her skull had been fractured. Her death hadn't been an accident.

Vi Nevin said nothing. A tremor passed through her.

“Nicola was murdered,” Barbara finally said when Vi requested no details. “Someone beat in her skull with a boulder.”

The fingers of Vis right hand closed tightly on the hem of her mini-dress. She said, “Sit down,” and motioned them to the sofas. She herself sat rigidly on the edge of a deep armchair opposite, knees and ankles together like a well-trained schoolgirl. Still, she didn't ask any questions. She was clearly stunned by the information, but she was equally clearly waiting.

What for? Barbara wanted to know. What was going on? “We're working the London end of the case,” she told Vi. “Our colleague-DI Lynley-is in Derbyshire.”

“The London end,” Vi murmured.

“There was a bloke found dead with the Maiden girl.” Nkata removed the leather notebook from his jacket and twirled a bit of lead from his propelling pencil. “Name's Terry Cole. He's got digs in Battersea. You acquainted with him?”

“Terry Cole?” Vi shook her head. “No. I don't know him.”

“An artist. A sculptor. He's got a studio in some railway arches in Portslade Road. He shares that and a flat with a girl called Cilia Thompson,” Barbara said.

“Cilia Thompson,” she echoed. And shook her head again.

“Did Nicola ever mention either of them? Terry Cole? Cilia Thompson?” Nkata asked.

“Terry or Cilia. No,” she said.

Barbara wanted to point out that there was no Narcissus present, so she could abjure her role in the mythical drama, but she thought the allusion might fall on unappreciative ears. She said, “Miss Nevin, Nicola Maiden's skull was smashed in. This might not break your heart, but if you could cooperate with us-”

“Please” she said as if she couldn't bear to hear the news again. “I haven't seen Nikki since the beginning of June. She went north to work for the summer, and she was due back in town next Wednesday, like I said.”

“To do what?” Barbara asked.

“What?”

“To do what when she got back into town?”

Vi gave no answer. She looked at both of them as if searching the waters for hidden piranhas.

“To work? To take up a life of leisure? To what?” Barbara asked. “If she was coming back here, she must have intended to do something with her time. As her flatmate, I expect you'd know what that was.”

She had intelligent eyes, Barbara saw. They were grey with black lashes. They studied and assessed while her brain doubtless weighed every possible consequence to every answer. Vi Nevin knew something about what had happened to Nicola; that was a certainty.

If she'd learned nothing else from working with Lynley for nearly four years, Barbara had learned that there were times to play hardball and times to give. Hardball produced the intimidation card. Giving offered an exchange of information. Having nothing to use as intimidation with the other woman, the interview was beginning to look like a time to give. Barbara said, “We know she dropped out of law college round the first of May, telling them she'd taken a full-time job with MKR Financial Management. But Mr. Reeve-that's her guv-informed us that she left the company just before that, telling him she was moving home to Derbyshire. Yet when she moved house, she gave this address-not a Derbyshire address-to her landlady in Islington. And, from what we've been able to gather, no one in Derbyshire had an inkling that she was up there for anything more than a summer's visit. What does this suggest to you, Miss Nevin?”

“Confusion,” Vi said. “She hadn't yet made up her mind about her life. Nikki liked to keep her options open.”

“Leaving college? Quitting her job? Telling tales unsupported by the facts? Her options weren't open. They were manufactured. Everyone we've talked to has a different idea of what she intended to do with herself.”

“I can't explain it. I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to say.”

“Did she have a job lined up?” Nkata looked up from his notebook.

“I don't know.”

“Did she have a source of income lined up?” Barbara asked.

“I don't know that either. She paid her share of the expenses here before she left for the summer, and-”

“Why'd she leave?”

“And as it was in cash” Vi plunged on, “I had no reason to question her source of income. Really, I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you.”

Fat chance, Barbara thought. She was lying through her pretty, baby-sized white teeth. “How did you come to know each other? Are you at the College of Law yourself?”

“We met through work.”

“MKR Financial?” And when Vi nodded, “What d'you do for them?”

“Nothing any longer. I left in April as well.” What she had done, she told them, was work as Tricia Reeve's personal assistant. “I didn't much care for her,” she said. “She's a bit… peculiar. I handed in my notice in March and left once they found a replacement for me.”

“And now?” Barbara asked.

“Now?”

“What d'you do now?” Nkata clarified. “Where d'you work?”

She'd taken up modeling, she told them. It had long been her dream, and Nikki had encouraged her to go for it. She produced a portfolio of professional photographs which depicted her in a variety of guises. In most of the pictures she looked like a waif: thin and large-eyed with the sort of vacant expression that was currently de rigueur in fashion magazines.

Barbara nodded at the photos, aiming for appreciation but inwardly wondering for a fleeting moment when Rubenesque figures-such as her own, frankly-would ever be in vogue. “You must be doing well. A place like this… I don't expect it comes cheap, does it? Is it your own, by the way? This maisonette?”

“It's rented.” Vi gathered up her pictures. She tapped them together and replaced them in their portfolio.