“Right. But she'd have been unconscious once she was hit.”
“Could we have two killers?” Hanken asked directly.
“Could have, yes,” Dr. Myles confirmed.
“Defensive wounds on the boy?” Lynley asked.
None that were obvious, Dr. Myles replied. She settled her trainers into a sports bag and zipped it smartly before giving the officers her attention again.
Hanken asked for confirmation on the times of the deaths. Dr. Myles enquired what times his own forensic pathologist had given him. Thirty-six to forty-eight hours before the bodies had been discovered, Hanken told her.
“I wouldn't argue with that.” And she scooped up her bag, nodded a curt farewell, and headed towards the hospital exit.
Now in the car, Lynley reflected on what they knew: that the boy had brought nothing with him into the camp site; that there were anonymous and threatening letters left at the scene; that the girl was unconscious for close to an hour; that the two means of murder were entirely different.
Lynley was dwelling on this last thought when Hanken swung the car to the left, and they headed north in the direction of a town called Tideswell. Along this route they ultimately regained the River Wye, where the steep cliffs and the woods surrounding Miller's Dale had long since brought dusk to the village. Just beyond the last cottage, a narrow lane veered northwest and Hanken steered the Ford into it. They quickly climbed above the woods and the valley and within minutes were cruising along a vast expanse of heather and gorse that appeared to undulate endlessly towards the horizon.
“Calder Moor,” Hanken said. “The largest moor in all the White Peak. It stretches from here to Castleton.” He drove another minute in silence till they came to a lay-by. He pulled into it and let the engine idle. “If she'd gone camping in the Dark Peak, we'd have had Mountain Rescue going after her eventually when she didn't turn up. No little old bat with a doggy to walk would've taken her constitutional up there and found the bodies. But this”-he swept his hand in an arc above the dashboard-“is accessible, all of it. There're miles and miles to cover if someone gets lost, but at least those miles can be handled on foot. Not an easy walk and not entirely safe. But easier to tackle than the peat bogs you'll find round Kinder Scout. If someone had to be murdered in the district, better it happened here, on the limestone plateau, than the other.”
“Is this where Nicola Maiden set off?” Lynley asked. There was no track that he could see from the car. The girl would have had to fight her way through everything from bracken to bilberry.
Hanken rolled down his window and spat out his chewing gum. He reached over Lynley and flipped open the glove compartment to fish out another stick. “She set off from the other side, northwest of here. She was hiking out to Nine Sisters Henge, which's closer to the western boundary of the moor. Rather more of interest to be looked at on that side: tumuli, caverns, caves, barrows. Nine Sisters Henge is the highlight.”
“You're from this area?” Lynley asked.
Hanken didn't answer at once. He looked as if he was considering whether to answer at all. He made the decision at last and said, “From Wirksworth,” and appeared to seal his lips on the subject.
“You're lucky to live where your history is. I wish I could say the same for myself.”
“Depends on the history,” Hanken said, and changed gears abruptly with, “Want to have a look at the site?”
Lynley was wise enough to know that how he met the offer to look over the crime scene would be crucial to the relationship he developed with the other officer. The truth was that he did want to see the site of the murders. No matter the point at which he joined an investigation, there was always a time during the course of the enquiry when he felt the need to look things over himself. Not because he didn't trust the competence of his fellow investigators but because only through a firsthand viewing of as much as possible of what related to the case was he able to become a part of the crime. And it was in becoming a part of the crime that he did his best work. Photographs, reports, and physical evidence conveyed a great deal. But sometimes the place where a murder occurred held back secrets from even the most astute observer. It would be in pursuit of those secrets that Lynley would inspect a murder scene. However, inspecting this particular murder scene ran the risk of unnecessarily alienating DI Hanken, and nothing Hanken had said or done so far even hinted that he might overlook a detail.
There would be an occasion, Lynley thought, when he and the other officer wouldn't be working this case in each other's presence. When that occasion arose, he would have ample opportunity to examine the location where Nicola Maiden and the boy had died.
“You and your team have covered that end of things, as far as I can see,” Lynley said. “It wastes our time for me to go over what you've already done.”
Hanken gave him another lengthy scrutiny, chewing his gum in staccato. “Wise decision,” he said with a nod as he put the car back into gear.
They cruised northwards along the eastern edge of the moor. Perhaps a mile beyond the little market town of Tideswell, they turned to the east and began to leave the heather, bilberry, and bracken behind. They drove a short distance into a dale-its gentle slopes dotted with trees that were only just beginning to display the foliage of the coming autumn-and at a junction that was curiously signposted to the “plague village,” they headed north again.
Less than quarter of an hour took them to Maiden Hall, situated in the shelter of limes and chestnut trees on a hillside not far from Padley Gorge. The route coursed them through a verdant woodland and along the edge of an incision in the landscape made by a brook that tumbled out of the woods and cut a meandering path between slopes of limestone, fern, and wild grass. The turnoff to Maiden Hall rose suddenly as they entered another stretch of woodland. It twisted up a hillside and spilled out into a gravel drive that swung round the front of a gabled stone Victorian structure and led to a car park behind it.
The hotel entrance was actually at the back of the building. There a discreet sign printed with the single word
There were no rooms available for the evening, she told them quietly. And as there had been a sudden death in the family, the dining room would not be open tonight. But she would be happy to recommend several restaurants in the area should the gentlemen require one.
Hanken offered the woman his police identification and introduced
Lynley. The woman said, “You'll be wanting to speak to the Maidens. I'll fetch them,” and she ducked past the officers, hurried through the reception area, and began climbing the stairs.
Lynley walked to one of the lounge's two alcoves, where late afternoon light was filtering through lead-paned windows. These overlooked the drive that curved round the front of the house. Beyond it, a lawn had been reduced to a heat-baked mat of twisted blades in the previous months’ drought. Behind him, he could hear Hanken moving restlessly round the room. A few magazines shifted position and slapped down onto table tops. Lynley smiled at the sound. His fellow DI was doubtless giving in to his restless need to put things in order.
It was absolutely quiet inside the hunting lodge. The windows were open, so the sound of birds and a distant plane broke the stillness. But inside, it was as hushed as an empty church.
A door closed somewhere and footsteps crunched across gravel. A moment later, a dark-haired man in jeans and a sleeveless grey sweatshirt pedaled past the windows on a ten-speed bicycle. He disappeared into the trees as the Maiden Hall drive began to descend the hill.
The Maidens joined them then. Lynley turned from the window at the sound of their entrance and Hanken's formal “Mr. and Mrs. Maiden. Please accept our sympathies.”
Lynley saw that the years of his retirement had dealt with Andy Maiden kindly. The former SO 10 officer and his wife were both in their early sixties, but they looked at least a decade younger. Andy had developed the appearance of an outdoorsman: a tanned face, a flat stomach, a brawny chest, all of which seemed suited to a man who'd left behind a reputation for disappearing chameleon-like into his environment. His wife matched him in physical condition. She, too, was tanned and solid, as if she took frequent exercise. Both of them looked as if they'd missed
