Elizabeth George - In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

It was indeed a Swiss Army model, and it now lay in an evidence bag on the car's seat next to him. The lab would conduct all the necessary tests to ascertain whether the blood on both the blades and the case was Terry Coles, but prior to those tests, another less scientific identification could give the investigators a valuable piece of information.

Hanken found Andy Maiden at the bottom of the drive leading up to the Hall. The former SO 10 officer was apparently installing a new sign for the establishment, an activity that involved a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a small concrete mixer, several lengths of flex, and an impressive set of floodlights. The old sign had already been removed and lay disassembled beneath a lime tree. The new one-in all its ornate, hand-carved, and hand-painted splendour-waited nearby to be mounted on a sturdy post of oak and wrought iron.

Hanken parked on the verge and studied Maiden, who was working with a fierce expenditure of energy, as if the replacement of the sign had to be accomplished in record time. He was sweating heavily, the damp forming rivulets on his legs and plastering his T-shirt to his torso. Hanken noted that he was in remarkable physical condition, looking like a man who had the strength and endurance of a boy in his twenties.

“Mr. Maiden,” he called as he shoved his door open. “Could I have a word, please?” And then more loudly when there was no reaction, “Mr. Maiden?”

Maiden slowly turned from his work, revealing his face. Hanken was struck by what his expression revealed of his mental state. If the other man's body could have belonged to a bloke of a younger generation, his face was ancient. Maiden looked as if the only thing keeping him going was the mindlessness of the moment's exertion. Ask him to do anything but labour and sweat, and the shell of the man that he had become would be blasted to fragments like a friable carapace hit by a hammer.

Hanken experienced a dual reaction to the sight of the former SO 10 officer: an immediate surge of sympathy that was swiftly replaced by the recollection of an important detail. As an undercover cop, Andy Maiden knew how to play a role.

Hanken slid the evidence bag into his jacket pocket and joined Andy Maiden on the drive. Maiden watched him, expressionless, as he approached.

Hanken nodded at the sign that Maiden was preparing to hang, admiring the artistry with which it had been crafted and saying, “Nicer than the Cavendish's road sign, I think.”

“Thanks.” But Maiden hadn't spent his career with the Met to think that the detective inspector in charge of the investigation into his daughter's murder had come to chat about the manner in which Maiden Hall was advertising its presence. He dumped a mound of concrete into the hole he'd dug, and he sank his shovel into the earth nearby. He said, “You've news for us,” and he appeared to be attempting to read Hanken's face for the answer in advance of hearing it.

“A knife's been found.” Hanken brought the other policeman into the picture with a brief explanation of how it had come into the hands of the police.

“You'll want me to look at it,” Maiden said.

Hanken brought out the plastic evidence bag and rested it with the knife in his palm. Maiden didn't ask to hold it himself. Rather, he stood gazing at it as if the case, the folded blades, or the blood upon both could give him an answer to questions he wasn't yet willing to ask.

“You mentioned that you gave her your own knife,” Hanken said. “Could this be it?” And when Maiden nodded, “Is there anything about the knife that you gave her that distinguishes it from others of the same type, Mr. Maiden?”

“Andy? Andy?” A woman's voice grew louder as the woman herself descended from the Hall, walking through the trees. “Andy darling, here. I've brought you some-” Nan Maiden stopped abruptly when she saw Hanken. “Excuse me, Inspector. I had no idea you were… Andy, I've brought you some water. The heat. You know. Pellegrino's all right, isn't it?”

She thrust the water at her husband. She touched the backs of her fingers to his temple, saying, “You aren't overdoing it, are you?”

He flinched.

Hanken felt a stirring on the back of his neck, like a spirit's caress against his skin. He looked from husband to wife, assessed the moment that had just passed between them, and knew he was fast approaching the time to ask the question no one had given voice to yet.

He said first, after nodding a hello to Maiden's wife, “As to anything that might differentiate the knife you gave your daughter from other similar Swiss Army knives…?”

“One of the blades of the scissors broke off a few years ago. I never replaced it,” Maiden said.

“Anything else?”

“Not that I recall.”

“After you gave the knife-possibly this one-to your daughter, did you buy another for yourself?”

“I have another, yes,” he said. “Smaller than that though. Easier to carry about.”

“You have it with you?”

Maiden reached into the pocket of his cut-off jeans. He brought out another model of a Swiss Army knife and handed it over. Hanken examined it, using his thumbnail to prise open its largest blade. Two inches appeared to be its length.

Nan Maiden said, “Inspector, I don't understand what Andy's knife has to do with anything.” And then without a pause for response, “Darling, you haven't had lunch yet. May I bring you a sandwich?”

But Andy Maiden was watching Hanken open the knife and take the measure of each of its blades. Hanken could feel the former officer's eyes upon him. He could sense the intent behind the gaze that fixed itself on his fingers.

Nan Maiden said, “Andy? May I bring you…?”

“No.”

“But you must eat something. You can't keep-”

“No.”

Hanken looked up. Maiden's replacement knife was too small for the murder weapon. But that didn't obviate the necessity for asking the question that both of them knew he would ask. He had, after all, admitted to helping his daughter pack her camping gear into her car on Tuesday. And he himself had given her the knife that he himself had later declared to be missing.

“Mr. Maiden,” he said, “where were you on Tuesday night?”

“That's a monstrous question,” Nan Maiden said quietly.

“I suppose it is,” Hanken agreed. “Mr. Maiden?”

Maiden glanced in the direction of the Hall above them, as if what he was about to say needed an accompanying corroboration that would be supplied by the Hall's existence. “I was having some eye trouble on Tuesday night. I went upstairs early because my vision kept tunneling. It gave me a scare, so I had a lie-down to see if that would help take care of it.”

Tunnel vision? Hanken wondered incredulously. That was certainly an alibi and a half.

Maiden obviously inferred Hanken's thoughts from the expression on his face. He said, “It happened during the evening meal, Inspector. One can't mix drinks or serve dinners if one's field of vision is reduced to the size of a five-pence coin.”

“It's the truth,” Nan asserted. “He went upstairs. He was resting in the bedroom.”

“What time was this?”

Maiden's wife answered for him. “The first of our guests had gone through for their starters. So Andy must have left round half past seven.”

Hanken looked at Maiden for confirmation of the time. Maiden frowned, as if he were conducting a complex inner dialogue with himself.

“How long were you up there in your bedroom, then?”

“The rest of the evening, the night,” Maiden said.

“Your vision didn't improve. Is that it?”

“That's it.”

“Have you seen a doctor? Seems to me that a problem like that could be cause for real concern.”