In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“Nice little packet of dosh that was,” Nkata said. “I'm happy to take it off your hands. And play no games, man. I know the amount. I'll give you twenty-four hours to have it here, in cash. I'spect things take longer when St. Helier's involved, and I'm an understanding kind of bloke, I am.”

The mention of St. Helier took things too far. Barbara saw that when King-Ryder's back stiffened suddenly as every nerve ending went on the alert. No ordinary yobbo in an ordinary scam would have known about that bank in St. Helier.

King-Ryder moved away from centre stage. He peered into the darkness of the stalls. Warily, he said: “Who the hell are you?”

Barbara took the cue.

“I think you know the answer to that, Mr. King-Ryder.” She stepped out of the darkness. “The music's not here, by the way. And to be honest, it probably never would have surfaced at all had you not killed Terry Cole to get it back. Terry had given it to his neighbour, the old lady, Mrs. Baden. And she hadn't the least idea what it was.”

“You,” King-Ryder said.

“Right. Do you want to come quietly, or shall we have a scene?”

“You've got nothing on me,” King-Ryder said. “I didn't say a damn thing that you can use to prove I lifted a finger against anyone.”

“Somewhat true, that.” Nkata came forward down the centre aisle of the theatre. “But we've got ourselves a nice leather jacket up in Derbyshire. And if your dabs match up with the dabs we pull off it, you're going to have one hell of a time dancing your way out of the dock.”

Barbara could almost see the wheels spinning wildly in King-Ryder's skull as he dashed through his options: fight, flight, or surrender. The odds were against him-despite one of the opposition being a woman-and while the theatre and the surrounding neighbourhood provided myriad places to run to and to hide, even had he tried to flee, it was only a matter of time before they nabbed him.

His posture altered again. “They killed my father,” he said obscurely. “They killed my dad.”

It was when Andy Maiden hadn't materialised at Broughton Manor within two hours that Lynley began to doubt the conclusions he'd drawn from the note that the man had left in Maiden Hall. A phone call from Hanken-informing him of Will Upman's safety-further solidified Lynley's doubts.

“There's no sign of him here, either,” Lynley told his colleague. “Pete, I'm getting a bad feeling about this.”

His bad feeling grew ominous when Winston Nkata phoned from London. He had Matthew King-Ryder at the Yard, Nkata told him in a rapid recitation that offered no opportunity for interruption. Barbara Havers had developed a plan to nab him, and it had worked like a charm. The bloke was ready to talk about the murders. Nkata and Havers could lock him up and wait for the inspector or they could have at him themselves. What were Lynley's wishes?

“It was all about that music Barb found in Battersea. Terry Cole got between the music and what was supposed to happen to the music, and King-Ryder's dad blew his brains out over it. Matthew was 'venging himself for the death, so he claims. 'Course, he wanted that music back as well.”

Lynley listened blankly as Nkata talked about the West End, the new production of Hamlet, phone boxes in South Kensington, and Terry Cole. When he had finished and he repeated his question-did the inspector want them to wait until his return to take Matthew King-Ryder's statement?-Lynley said numbly, “What about the girl? Nicola. What about her?”

“Just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Nkata replied.

“King-Ryder killed her because she was there. When the arrow hit Terry, she saw him with the bow. Barb says she saw a picture in his flat, by the way: Matthew as a kid posing with Dad on Sports Day at school. He was wearing a quiver, she says. She saw the strap of it running across his chest. I 'xpect if we get a warrant, we'll find that long bow in his digs. D'you want me to get on to that as well?”

“How was Havers involved?”

“She grilled Vi Nevin when the girl came to last night. She got most of the details from her.” Lynley could hear Nkata draw a deep breath to hurry on. “Since Nevin didn't seem like part of the case, 'spector… because of that Islington business… the threat… the wheel clamp and Andy Maiden and all… I told her to do it. I told Barb to talk to her. If things come down to reprimands, I'll take the rap on that.”

Lynley felt stunned by the amount of information Nkata had passed on to him, but he found the voice to say, “Well done, Winston.”

“I just went along with Barb, spector.”

“Then well done to Constable Havers as well.”

Lynley rang off. He found that his movements were slower than normal. Surprise-shock-was the cause. But when he'd finally managed to take in the extent of what had occurred in London during his absence, he felt apprehension descend like a cloud.

After her appearance at the Buxton police station, Nancy Maiden had gone home to await word of her husband's whereabouts. Stubbornly refusing the offer of a female constable to remain with her until Andy turned up, she'd said, “Find him. Please,” to Lynley as she'd left the station. And her eyes had tried to communicate something that she wouldn't put into words.

He realised the challenge that a search for Andy Maiden presented. If he'd learned nothing else in the past few days, he'd come to know that the Peak District was vast: crosshatched by hiking trails, distinguished by utterly different topographical phenomena, and marked with five hundred thousand years of man's habitation upon it. But when he considered the desperate state that Andy had been in when they'd last spoken and he combined this state with the words I'm taking care of this myself, he had a fairly good idea where his search should begin.

Lynley told the Brittons and Samantha McCallin to remain in the Long Gallery with their police guards until further notice. He left them there.

He sped north from Broughton Manor towards Bakewell, propelled by an urgency born of dread. Andy believed that the investigation was heading unstoppably in his direction, and everything Lynley and Hanken had done and said at their last two meetings with the man had communicated that brutal fact. Should he be arrested for his daughter's murder-should he even be questioned more thoroughly about his daughter's murder-the truth of Nicola's life in London would come out. And he'd already demonstrated the extremes to which he was willing to go in order to keep the truth of that life hidden.

Lynley tore across the district to Sparrowpit and flew along the country road beyond it to the white iron gate, behind which lay the unbroken expanse of Calder Moor. A Land Rover stood at the far end of the truncated lane that led onto the moor. Directly behind it was a rusting Morris.

Lynley set off at a jog along the muddy, rut-filled footpath. Because he did not wish to consider the extreme Andy might have gone to in order to keep Nicola's secrets from her mother, he concentrated on the one recollection that had bound him to the other man for more than ten years.

Wearing a wire is the easy part, boy-o, Dennis Hextell had told him. Opening your mouth without sounding like you've got starch in your knickers is something else. Hextell had despised him, had patiently anticipated his failure to portray himself undercover as anything other than what he was: the privileged son of a privileged son. Andy Maiden, on the other hand, said, Give him a chance, Den. And when that chance had resulted in an entire lorry of semtex-intended as bait-hijacked by the very people it was intended to entrap, the message Americans don't use the word torch, Jack arrived at the Met within the same hour and served as illustration of how a single syllable can cost lives and destroy careers. That it hadn't destroyed Lynley's was owing to Andy Maiden. He'd taken the stricken young officer aside after the subsequent Belfast bombing and said, “Come in here, Tommy. Talk to me. talk.”

And Lynley had done, eventually. He had poured out his guilt, his confusion, and his sorrow in a manner that ultimately told him how badly he needed a figure to act the role of parent in his life.

Andy Maiden had stepped into that part without ever questioning why Lynley had needed him so desperately to do so. He'd said, “Listen to me, son,” and Lynley had listened, in small part because the other man was his superior officer, in large part because no one before had ever used the word son when speaking to him. Lynley came from a world where people recognised their individual places in the social hierarchy and generally kept to them or felt the consequences for not doing so. But Andy Maiden was not such a man. “You're not cut out for SO10,” Andy had told him. “What you've been through proves that, Tommy. But you