In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

compulsively neat DI. It spoke of the level of his excitement.

Hanken was recounting his interview with Will Upman. The gusto with which he told the tale was growing as he reached its climax. Metaphorically speaking, it seemed. Because according to Hanken, the solicitor apparently hadn't been able to perform to his usual standards.

“But he said popping his cork doesn't matter to him when he's with a woman,” Hanken scoffed. “Said what matters is ‘the fun of it all.’”

“I'm intrigued,” Lynley said. “How did you manage to get that admission from him?”

“That he shagged her or that he didn't go the distance once he had her on the skewer?”

“Either. Both.” Lynley selected the clearest picture of Terry Cole's face and set it next to the clearest of the wounds on his body. “I trust you didn't use thumb-screws, Peter.”

Hanken laughed. “Didn't have to. I just told him what his neighbours had reported, and he sent the white flag straight up the pole.”

“Why had he lied?”

“Claims he hadn't. Claims he would have told us straight out if we'd asked straight out.”

“That's splitting hairs.”

“Lawyers.” The single word said it all.

Will Upman, Hanken had reported concisely, confessed to a single fling with Nicola Maiden and that fling had occurred on her last night in his employ. He'd felt a strong attraction to her for the entire summer, but his position as her employer had prevented him from making a move.

“Being involved elsewhere didn't prevent him?” Lynley clarified.

Not at all. Because how could he be truly, madly, and deeply in love with Joyce-and consequently legitimately “involved” with her-when he felt so wildly attracted to Nicola? And if he was wildly attracted to Nicola, didn't he owe it to himself to see what that attraction was all about? Joyce had been pressing him for a commitment-she'd had her mind set on their living together-but he couldn't take the next step with her until he cleared his head about Nicola.

“May I assume he dashed off straightaway and proposed to Joyce once his head was cleared with regard to the Maiden girl?” Lynley asked.

Hanken guffawed appreciatively. Upman had oiled the wheels with drinks, dinner, and wine, the DI reported. He took her to his home. More drinks there. Some music. Several cappuccinos. He had candles set up round his bathtub-“Lord.” Lynley shuddered. The man was a victim of Hollywood cinema.

– and he got her undressed and in the water without any trouble.

“Her wanting it as bad as he did, according to Upman,” Han-ken said.

They played in the tub till they looked like prunes, at which point they adjourned to the bedroom.

“Which is where,” Hanken concluded, “the rocket didn't launch.”

“And on the night of the murder?”

“Where was he, you mean?” Hanken recounted that as well. At lunch on Tuesday, Upman had had another set-to with the girlfriend on the topic of cohabitation. Rather than go home after work and run the risk of a phone call from her, he went for a drive. He ended up at Manchester Airport, where he checked into a hotel for the night and had a massage therapist come to his room to relieve him of his tension.

“Even had the receipts to wave in front of me,” Hanken said. “Seems he intends to claim it as a business expense.”

“You're checking it out.”

“I plan to, as I breathe,” Hanken said. “Your end of things?”

This was where he had to tread carefully, Lynley thought. So far, despite his encounter with Upman, Hanken hadn't appeared to be wedded irrevocably to any particular scenario. Still, what he was about to suggest was a contravention of the DI's main conjecture. He wanted to lead into it carefully so that his colleague might be open to its logic.

He hadn't found the pager, he said. But he'd had a rather long look round the site and an even longer think about the two bodies. He wanted to propose an altogether different hypothesis to the one they'd been working with. Would Hanken hear him out?

The DI lowered his chair and smashed out his cigarette. Mercifully, he didn't light another. He ran his tongue over his teeth, eyes speculatively fixed on Lynley. He finally said, “Let's have it,” and settled back as if expecting a lengthy monologue.

“I think we've got one killer,” Lynley said. “And no accomplice. No phone call for reinforcements when our man-”

“Or woman? Or are you giving that up as well?”

“Or woman,” Lynley replied, and he used the opportunity to inform Hanken of his encounter with Samantha McCallin on Calder Moor.

The other DI said, “That puts her back in the running, I'd say.”

“She was never out of it.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“No call for reinforcements when the killer saw there were two targets instead of one.”

Hanken folded his hands over his stomach and said, “Continue.”

Lynley used the photograph of Terry Cole as he did so. Burns on the face but no defensive wounds on the body, Lynley said, indicated that Cole hadn't been held in the fire but, rather, that he had fallen into it. The damage to his skin indicated that contact with the flames had been more than brief. There was no contusion to the head to suggest that he'd been clubbed, knocked unconscious, and left in the fire. So he had to have been wounded or disabled in some way as he sat by the fire in the first place.

“One killer,” Lynley said, “goes out there after the girl. When he arrives at the site-”

“Or she,” Hanken cut in.

“Yes. Or she. When he or she arrives at the site, it's to find that Nicola isn't alone. So Cole has to be eliminated. First, because he's capable of protecting her should the killer go after her, and second, because he's a potential witness. But the killer faces a dilemma. Does he-or she, yes, I see that, Peter-kill Cole at once and run the risk of losing Nicola if she escapes while he's dispatching Cole? Or does he kill Nicola and run the risk of being thwarted by Cole? He has surprise on his side, but that's all he has aside from his weapon.” Lynley sorted through the photographs and pulled out one that showed the trail of blood most clearly. “If you consider all that and take into account the deposits of blood at the site-”

Hanken raised his hand to stop the words. He moved his gaze from Lynley to the window where the unappealing prospect of Buxton football stadium across the street resembled a concentration camp. He said thoughtfully, “The killer rushes forward with his knife and wounds the boy in an instant. The boy topples into the fire, where he's burned. The girl takes to her heels. The killer follows.”

“But his weapon is lodged in the boy.”

“Hmm. Yes. I see how it works.” Hanken turned from the window, eyes cloudy as he considered the scene he went on to describe. “It's dark outside the ring of the fire. The girl's on the run.”

“So does he take the time to remove the knife from the boy or does he take off after the girl straightaway?”

“He goes after the girl. He has to, hasn't he? He dispatches her with three blows to the head, then returns to finish off the boy.”

“By which time Cole's managed to crawl from the fire to the edge of the stone circle. And that's where the killer finishes him off. The blood tells the tale, Peter. Dripping down the standing stone, pooled on the ground.”

“If you're right,” Hanken said, “we've got a killer covered in blood. It's night and in the middle of the back of beyond, so he has an advantage there. But eventually, he's going to need something to hide his clothes, unless he did the killing in the nude, which isn't likely.”

“He may have brought something with him,” Lynley said.

“Or taken something from the scene itself.” Hanken slapped his hands against his thighs and got to his feet. “Let's get the Maidens to take a look at the girl's belongings,” he said.

Barbara fumed, punched her fist into her palm, and paced as Winston Nkata placed the call to Lynley from inside the Prince of Wales pub. They were across the street from Battersea Park and round the corner from Terry Cole's domicile, and while she wanted to grab the phone from Nkata's hand and make a few points more forcefully