Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

That they were on the trail of something significant had been spelled out to them in the complete lack of personal detail in Nicola Maiden's Fulham bedroom. Apart from a few articles of clothing and an innocuous line of seashells on the window sill, there was nothing to suggest the room had ever been occupied by a real person. Barbara would have concluded that the Fulham address was a front and that the Maiden girl had never lived there at all had not the evidence of something having been removed betrayed Vi Nevin's use of the time between their speaking to her from the street and her appearance at the front door of the building. Two drawers in the large chest were completely empty, in the clothes cupboard a space on the hanging rail spoke of a few articles hastily deleted, and on top of the chest bare spots devoid of dust indicated that something had stood there until recently.

Barbara saw all of this, but she didn't bother to request a look at Vi Nevin's own bedroom for the missing items. The young woman had been plain enough earlier that she knew her rights under the law, and there was no point in pushing her to exercise them.

But it meant something that she'd performed the expurgation. And only a fool would walk away from the implications.

Nkata rang off and recounted Lynley's end of the investigation. Barbara listened carefully, looking for connections among the pieces of information they were gathering. When he was done, she said, “The Upman bloke claims he stuffed her on a one-off. But he could be Mr. Oooh-la-la from the postcards and be lying through his teeth, couldn't he?”

“Or lying about what it meant when he had her,” Nkata said. “He could've thought it was something important happening between them. She could've just been doing it for kicks.”

“And when he found out, he did her in? Where was he on Tuesday night, then?”

“Getting a massage near Manchester Airport. For stress, he said.”

Barbara whooped. “That's an alibi I've not heard before.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and jerked her head towards the door. They ducked out into Parkgate Road.

The house that contained Terry Cole's flat was less than five minutes by foot from the pub, and Barbara led Nkata to it. This time when she rang the buzzer next to the tag reading Cole/Thompson, the door catch was released in reply.

Cilia Thompson met them at the top of the stairs. She was dressed for a night out, her metallic silver mini-skirt and matching bustier and beret suggesting an imminent audition for a role in a feminist Wizard of Oz. She said, “I don't have much time.”

Barbara replied, “No problem. We don't need much.” She introduced Nkata and they went inside the flat which, occupying the second floor of the house, had been remodeled into two small bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a loo the size of a larder. Not wanting to encounter another Vi Nevin situation, Barbara said, “We'd like to paw through everything, if that's okay with you. If Terry was into something dodgy, he might have left evidence of it anywhere. He might have hidden it as well.”

Cilla had nothing to hide, she informed them, but she didn't fancy them fingering through her knickers personally. She'd show them every one of her belongings, but that was the extent of it. They could do whatever serious trolling they wanted to do among Terry's lumber.

The rules established, they began in the kitchen, where the cupboards revealed nothing except a predilection for instant macaroni cheese which the flat's occupants appeared to consume by the gross. Several bills lay on the draining board-where what looked like six weeks of crockery was drying-and Nkata examined these and handed them over to Barbara. The telephone bill was respectable but not outrageously high. The electricity usage seemed normal. Neither bill was overdue; neither bill had gone unpaid during the previous billing period. The refrigerator was equally unilluminating. A limp lettuce and a plastic bag of sad-looking Brussels sprouts suggested that the flat's inhabitants hadn't been as conscientious about eating their veg as they should have been. But there was nothing more sinister inside the appliance than a tin of pea soup that was open and appeared to have been half eaten as it was, straight up with no heating. Barbara's stomach lurched. And she'd thought her culinary tastes were questionable.

“We eat out mostly,” Cilia said from the doorway.

“Looks like,” Barbara agreed.

They moved to the sitting room, where they paused and took in its unusual decor. The room appeared to be a showplace for their art. There were several pieces of the same agricultural nature as the larger efforts that Barbara had seen earlier that day in the railway arch studio, marking them as the work of Terry. The other objects-paintings, these-were the obvious results of Cilia's endeavours.

Nkata-having not seen Cilia's mouth fixation given concrete form-whistled quietly in reaction to the dozen or more oral cavities that were explored on canvas in the sitting room. Screaming, laughing, weeping, speaking, eating, slobbering, vomiting, and bleeding were all featured in graphic detail. Cilia had also explored further fantastic possibilities of the orifice in her paintings: Several mouths had fully grown human beings rising from them, most notably members of the Royal Family.

“Very… different,” Nkata commented.

“Munch, however, has nothing to worry about,” Barbara murmured next to him.

There were bedrooms on either side of the sitting room, and they ventured into Cilia's first, with the artist herself leading the way. Aside from a collection of Paddington Bears that overflowed from the top of the chest of drawers and the window sill onto the floor, Cilia's room didn't present any contradiction to the artist herself. Her wardrobe contained the usual colour-splodged garments one would associate with a painter; the milk crate serving as bedside table held the box of condoms that one would expect of the sexually active and sexually cautious young woman in the depressing days of STDs; a considerable collection of CDs met with Barbara's approval and told Nkata how far out of the loop he was when it came to rock ‘n’ roll; a number of copies of What's On and Time Out had pages turned down and galleries with newly mounted shows circled. The walls featured her own art, and the floor had been painted by the artist to reveal more of her singular artistic sensibility. Great flapping tongues dribbled partially masticated food onto naked infants who were defecating onto other great flapping tongues. It was certainly one for Freud.

Cilia said, “I told Mrs. Baden I'd paint over it when I move out,” in apparent response to the detectives' failure to keep their expressions dispassionate. “She likes to support talent. She says so. You can ask her.”

“We'll take your word for it,” Barbara said.

They found nothing in the bathroom save a grubby and unhygienic ring round the bath which Nkata clucked at mournfully. From there they went to Terry Cole's bedroom with Cilia dogging their heels as if worried that they might nick one of her masterpieces if she didn't keep watch.

Nkata took a post at the chest of drawers, Barbara at the wardrobe. There, she discovered the gripping fact that Terry Cole's preference in colours was black, and he carried this theme out in T-shirts, jerseys, jeans, jackets, and footwear. While Nkata slid open drawers behind her, Barbara began going through the jeans and the jackets in the hope that they might reveal something cogent. She found only two possibilities among the cinema ticket stubs and crumpled tissues. The first was a scrap of paper with 31-32 Soho Square written on it in a small, pointed hand, and the second was a business card that had been folded in half over a wad of discarded chewing gum. Barbara prised this open. One could always hope…