In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (33 page)

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.

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.

“From who?” Nkata asked the question without looking up from his meticulous note-taking.