In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

more than one night's sleep though. Andy Maiden was unshaven, in rumpled clothing. Nan was haggard, beneath her eyes a puckering of skin that was purplish in hue.

Maiden managed a grateful half-smile. “Tommy. Thank you for coming.”

Lynley said, “I'm sorry it has to be under these circumstances,” and introduced himself to Maiden's wife. He said, “Everyone at the Yard sends condolences, Andy.”

“Scotland Yard?” Nan Maiden sounded dazed. Her husband said, “In a moment, love.” He made a gesture with his arm, indicating the alcove behind Lynley, where two sofas faced each other across a coffee table that was spread with copies of Country Life. He and his wife took one of the sofas, Lynley the other. Hanken swiveled an armchair round and positioned himself just a few inches away from the central point between the Maidens and Lynley. The action suggested that he would play a mediating influence between the parties. But Lynley noted that the DI was careful to place his chair several inches closer to Scotland Yard of the present than to Scotland Yard of the past.

If Andy Maiden was aware of Hanken's manoeuvre and what it implied, he gave no sign. Instead, he sat forward on the sofa with his hands balanced between his legs. Left hand massaged right. Right massaged left.

His wife observed him doing this. She passed him a small red ball that she took from her pocket, saying, “Is it still bad? Shall I phone the doctor for you?”

“You're ill?” Lynley asked.

Maiden squeezed the ball with his right hand and gazed at the spread fingers of his left. “Circulation,” he said. “It's nothing.”

“Please let me phone the doctor, Andy,” his wife said.

“That's not what's important.”

“How can you say-” Nan Maiden's eyes grew suddenly bright. “God. Did I forget even for a moment?” She leaned her forehead against her husband's shoulder and began to cry. Roughly, Maiden put his arm round her.

Lynley cast a look at Hanken. You or I? he asked silently. It's not going to be pleasant.

Hanken's reply was a sharp nod. It's yours, the nod said.

“There isn't going to be an easy time to talk about your daughter's death,” Lynley began gently. “But in a murder investigation-and I know that you're already aware of this, Andy-the first hours are critical.”

As he spoke, Nan Maiden raised her head. She tried to speak, failed, then tried again.

“Murder investigation,” she repeated. “What are you saying?”

Lynley looked from husband to wife. Hanken did likewise. Then they looked at each other. Lynley said to Andy, “You've seen the body, haven't you? You've been told what happened?”

“Yes,” Maiden said. “I've been told. But I-” “Murder?” His wife cried out in horror. “Oh my God, Andy. You never said Nicola was murdered!”

Barbara Havers had spent the afternoon in Greenford, making the decision to use the rest of her sick day to visit her mother in Hawthorn Lodge, an overnamed postwar semi-detached where Mrs. Havers had lived as a permanent resident for the last ten months. In the way of most people who attempt to gain support from others for a position that might be untenable, Barbara had found that there was a price to pay for successfully cultivating advocates among Inspector Lynley's friends and relatives. And because she didn't want to face any more price- paying in one afternoon, she sought a distraction.

Mrs. Havers was nothing if not adept at providing escape hatches from reality, since she herself no longer lived in that realm on a regular basis. Barbara had found her in the back garden of Hawthorn Lodge, where she was engaged in putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle's box top had been propped up against an old mayonnaise jar that was filled with coloured sand holding seven plastic carnations in position. On this box top, a smarmy cartoon prince-perfectly proportioned and demonstrating a sufficient amount of adoration for the occasion-was slipping a high-heeled glass shoe onto the slender and curiously toeless foot of Cinderella while the girl's two cowlike and resentful stepsisters watched jealously to one side, culling a richly deserved comeuppance.

With the tender encouragement of her nurse and keeper Mrs. Flo-as Florence Magentry was called by her three elderly residents and their families-Mrs. Havers had managed successfully to assemble Cinderella, part of the stepsisters, the prince's shoe-wielding arm, his manly torso, and his bent left leg. However as Barbara joined her, she was in the midst of attempting to pound the prince's face onto one of the stepsisters’ shoulders and when Mrs. Flo gently guided her hand towards the proper placement of the piece, Mrs. Havers shouted, “No, no, no!” and pushed the whole puzzle away, knocking over the jar, scattering its plastic carnations, and spilling sand across the table.

Barbara's intervention didn't help matters. Whether her mother recognised her during visits was always a matter of chance, and on this day Mrs. Havers’ clouded consciousness attached Barbara's face to someone called Libby O'Rourke, who apparently had been the school temptress during Mrs. Havers’ childhood. It seemed that Libby O'Rourke had operated in a female version of Georgie Porgie mode most of the time, and one of the boys whom she'd kissed was none other than Mrs. Havers’ own beau, an act of effrontery that Mrs. Havers felt compelled to avenge on this very day by throwing puzzle pieces, shouting invective coloured by the sort of language Barbara wouldn't have thought part of her mother's vocabulary, and ultimately crumpling into a weeping heap. It was a situation that had taken some handling: persuading her mother to leave the garden, urging her upstairs to her room, coaxing her to look through a family album long enough to see that Barbara's round and snubby face appeared on its pages far too often for her to be the loathsome Libby.

“But I don't have a little girl,” Mrs. Havers protested in a voice more frightened than confused when she'd been forced to agree that Libby O'Rourke's being given a position of prominence in the family album made no sense, considering the offence she had once given. “Mummy won't let me have babies. I c'n only have dolls.”

Barbara had no answer for that. Her mother's mind made the tortuous journey into the past too often and with so little warning that she'd long ago forgiven herself her inability to deal with it with any expertise. So, after the album was set aside, she hadn't made any further attempts to argue, persuade, dissuade, or appeal. She'd merely selected one of the travel magazines that her mother loved to thumb through and she'd spent ninety minutes sitting shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the bed with the woman who'd forgotten she'd ever given birth, looking at photographs of Thailand, Australia, and Greece.

That was when her conscience finally gained some dominance over her resistance, and the internal voice that had earlier decried Lyn-ley's actions was confronted by a voice that suggested her own actions might have been wanting. What ensued was a nonverbal argument taking place in her head. One side insisted that Inspector Lynley was a vindictive prig. The other informed her that-prig or not-he didn't deserve her disloyalty. And she had been disloyal. Trotting round to Chelsea in order to denounce him to his intimates was not the behaviour of a steadfast friend. On the other hand, he'd been disloyal as well. Taking it upon himself to amplify her formal punishment by overlooking her on a case, he'd more than illustrated whose side he was on in her battle to save her professional hide, no matter what he claimed about her need to keep a low profile for a while.

Such was the argument that raged within her. It began as she leafed through the travel magazines and murmured comments about fantasy holidays her mother had taken to Crete, Mykonos, Bangkok, and Perth. It continued unabated on her drive from Greenford back into London at the end of the day. Not even an ancient Fleetwood Mac tape playing at maximum volume could subdue the disputing parties inside Barbara's head. Because throughout the drive, singing harmony with Stevie Nicks was the mezzo soprano of Barbara's conscience, a sententious cantata that stubbornly refused to be excised from her brain.

He deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it! she silently screamed at the voice.

And where did giving him what he deserved get you, my darling? her conscience replied.

She was still refusing to answer that question when she pulled into Steeles Road and slid the Mini into a parking space that was being conveniently vacated by a woman, three children, two dogs, and what appeared to be a cello with legs. She locked up and trudged in the direction of Eton Villas, gratified that she was feeling tired, because tired meant sleep and sleep meant putting an end to the voices.

She heard other voices, however, as she rounded the corner and came upon the yellow Edwardian house behind which sat her mouse-hole dwelling. These new voices were coming from the flagstone area in front of the ground floor flat. And one of these voices-belonging to a child-cried out happily when Barbara came through the gate of bright orange pickets.