In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

“But Terry Cole answered the phone that night, not your dad,” Barbara said. “Why didn't you recognise the different voice?”

“He said ‘yeah,’ that's all,” Matthew told her. “I thought he was nervous, in a hurry. And he sounded like someone who was expecting the call.”

In the days that followed, he'd seen that his father was agitated about something, but he'd assumed that King-Ryder was in a state about having had to pay out one million pounds. He'd had no way of knowing that his father was daily growing more frantic as the phone call he kept hoping to receive-from the blackmailer who, he believed, had failed to contact him at the phone box in Elvaston Place-did not materialise. As the premier of Hamlet approached, David King-Ryder had started to see himself in the power of someone who was either going to bleed him dry with more demands for money over the years or ruin him forever by releasing Michael Chandler's music to the tabloids.

“When he hadn't heard by opening night and the production was such a success… You know what happened.”

“He blew out his brains,” Barbara said. “That's owing to you.”

“I didn't mean him to die,” King-Ryder cried. “He was my dad. But I thought it wasn't fair that all his money… every penny of his money except that measly bequest to Ginny…” He lowered his gaze, spoke fiercely to hands rather than to Barbara and Winston. “He owed me something. He hadn't been much of a father to me. He owed me at least this much.”

“Why didn't you just ask him for it?” Nkata asked.

Matthew breathed out a bitter laugh. “Dad worked to be who and where he was. He expected me to do the same. And I always did-I worked and I worked-and I would have kept on working. But then I saw that he was going to take a shortcut to his own success through Michael's music. And I decided that if he could take a shortcut, so could I. And it would have come out all right in the end if that bloody little bastard hadn't showed up. And then when I saw that he intended to use the music and to play the same rotten game with me, I had to do something. I couldn't just sit there and let it happen.”

Barbara frowned. Everything until that moment had fitted perfectly into the picture. She said, “Play the same game? What?”

“Blackmail,” Matthew King-Ryder said. “Cole walked into my office with that smirk on his face and said, ‘I got something here that I need your help with, Mr. King-Ryder,’ and as soon as I saw it-a single sheet just like I'd sent to my dad-I knew exactly what that little shit had in mind. I asked him how he came to have it in his possession, but he wouldn't tell me. So I threw him out. But I followed him. I knew he wasn't in it alone.”

On the trail of the music, he'd followed Terry Cole to the railway arches in Battersea, and from there to his flat on Anhalt Road. When the boy had gone inside the studio, Matthew had taken a chance and riffled through the saddlebags hanging from his motorcycle. When he'd found nothing, he knew he had to continue following till the kid led him either to the music or to the person who had the music.

It was when he'd followed him to Rostrevor Road that he'd first believed he was on the right trail. For Terry had emerged from Vi Nevin's building with a large manila envelope, which he'd placed in his saddlebag. And that, Matthew King-Ryder had believed, had to contain the music.

“When he took to the motorway, I'd no idea where he was going. But I was committed to seeing things through. So I followed him.”

And when he'd seen Terry and Nicola Maiden having their meeting out in the middle of nowhere, he'd been convinced that they were the principals behind his father's death and his own misfortune. His only weapon was the long bow he had in his car. He went back for it, waited till nightfall, then dispatched them both.

“But there was no music at the camping site,” Matthew said. “Just an envelope of letters, pasted-up letters from magazines and newspapers.”

So he'd had to keep looking. He had to find that score to Hamlet, and he'd returned to London and searched in those places Terry had led him.

“I didn't think of the old woman,” he said finally.

“You should have accepted when she offered you cake,” Barbara told him.

Once more Matthew's glance fell to his hands. His shoulders shook. He began to cry.

“I didn't mean harm to come to him. I swear to God. If he'd only just said he'd leave me something. But he wouldn't do that. I was his son, his only son, but I wasn't meant to have anything. Oh, he said I could have his family pictures. His bloody piano and guitar. But as for the money… any of the money… a single penny of his God damn money… Why couldn't he see that it made me worth nothing to be overlooked? I was supposed to be grateful just to be his son, just to be alive on account of him. He'd give me a job, but for all the rest… No. I had to make it entirely on my own. And it wasn't fair. Because I loved him. All the years when he failed, I still loved him. And if he'd continued to fail, it wouldn't have made a difference. Not to me.”

His distress seemed real, and Barbara wanted to feel sorry for him. But she found that she couldn't as she realised how much he wanted her pity. He wanted her to see him as a victim of his father's indifference. No matter that he'd destroyed his father for one million pounds, no matter that he'd committed two brutal murders. They were meant to feel sorry that circumstances beyond his control had forced his hand, that David King-Ryder hadn't seen fit to leave him the money in his will, which would have precluded the crimes ever happening in the first place.

God, Barbara thought, there it was: the malaise of their time. Do it to Julia. Hurt someone else. Blame someone else. But don't hurt or blame me.

She wouldn't begin to buy that line of thinking. Any pity Barbara might have mustered for the man was erased by two senseless deaths in Derbyshire and the image of what he'd done to Vi Nevin. He'd pay for those crimes. But a prison term-no matter its length-didn't seem enough recompense for blackmail, suicide, murder, assault, and the aftermath of each. She said, “You might want to know the truth of the matter about Terry Cole's intentions, Mr. King-Ryder. In fact, I think it's important that you know.”

And so she told him that all Terry Cole had wanted was a simple address and telephone number. In fact, had Matthew King-Ryder offered to take the music off his hands and pay him handsomely for bringing it to the offices of King-Ryder Productions, the boy would probably have been thrilled to the dickens.

“He didn't even know what it was,” Barbara said. “He hadn't the slightest idea in the world that he'd put his hands on the music to Hamlet.”

Matthew King-Ryder absorbed this information. But if Barbara had hoped she was dealing him a mortal blow that would worsen his coming life in prison, she was disabused of that notion when he replied. “He's to blame for it all. If he hadn't interfered, my dad would be alive.”

Lynley reached Eaton Terrace at ten that night. He found his wife in the bathroom, sunk in a fragrant citrus froth of bubbles. Her eyes were closed, her head cradled in a towelling pillow, and her hands-garbed incongruously in white satin gloves-rested on the spotless stainless steel tray that spanned the width of the bath and held her soaps and her sponges. A CD player sat on the vanity amid a clutter of Helens unguents, potions, and creams. Music emanated from it. A soprano sang.

They lay him-gently and softly-in the cold cold ground,
they lay him-gently and softly-in the cold cold ground.
And here am I, a child without a light, to see me through the coming
storm, with no one here to tell me I am not alone.