In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

than Winston was making them, she knew she had to hold her tongue. Nkata was relaying the source of her agitation to their superior officer, and silence on her part was essential lest Lynley realise that she'd left her post at the computer. “I'll get back to CRIS tonight,” she swore to Nkata when she realised that his reluctance to trot from Fulham to Battersea was directly connected to his worries about her willingness to attend to her assigned duties. “Winston, on my mum's life, I tell you that I'll sit at the screen till I'm blind. Okay? But later. Later. Let's do Battersea first.”

Nkata was relaying to Lynley the results of their visits to Nicola's former employer and to her current flatmate. After reporting on the postcards that Nicola had sent to Vi Nevin and explaining what Vi had claimed their implicit message was, he went on to dwell in particular upon the fact that Nicola's bedroom in the Fulham maisonette had apparently been “seen to” prior to his laying eyes upon it. “How many birds you know have nothing that says who they are sitting round?” Nkata asked. “Man, I say this. That bird Vi kept us waiting on the steps before letting us in 'cause she was shoveling that bedroom clear of something once she heard there were rozzers at the door.”

Barbara winced and held her breath at the plural pronouns. No fool, Lynley. On his end of the line, he jumped at once.

Nkata said in reply with a glance at Barbara, “What?… No. Figure of speech, man… Yeah. Believe me, I got that engraved on my soul.” He listened as Lynley apparently relayed how things were playing out in his part of the world. He laughed outright at a piece of information, saying, “The fun of it? Lord, I believe that like the world is flat,” and toyed with the steel tubing of the telephone cord. After a few moments, he said, “Battersea right now. Barb said that Cole's flatmate'd be in for the evening, so I thought to have a look through his traps. Landlady wouldn't let Barb have a peek earlier and-” He stopped as Lynley interrupted at some length.

Barbara tried to read his expression for an indication of what the inspector was saying. The black man's face was completely blank. She whispered tersely, “What? What?”

Nkata waved her off. “Following up on those names you gave her,” he said. “Far as I know, at least. You know Barb.”

“Oh, thanks very much, Winston,” she whispered.

Nkata turned his shoulder and gave her his back. He went on to Lynley, saying, “Barb said the flatmate says anything's possible. The kid was flush with money-always had a wad of cash-and he never sold a stick of his art. Which isn't hard to believe when you see it. Blackmail's sounding nicer every minute.” Again he listened and he finally said, “That's why I want to have a recce. There's a connection somewhere. Has to be.”

That they were on the trail of something significant had been spelled out to them in the complete lack of personal detail in Nicola Maiden's Fulham bedroom. Apart from a few articles of clothing and an innocuous line of seashells on the window sill, there was nothing to suggest the room had ever been occupied by a real person. Barbara would have concluded that the Fulham address was a front and that the Maiden girl had never lived there at all had not the evidence of something having been removed betrayed Vi Nevin's use of the time between their speaking to her from the street and her appearance at the front door of the building. Two drawers in the large chest were completely empty, in the clothes cupboard a space on the hanging rail spoke of a few articles hastily deleted, and on top of the chest bare spots devoid of dust indicated that something had stood there until recently.

Barbara saw all of this, but she didn't bother to request a look at Vi Nevin's own bedroom for the missing items. The young woman had been plain enough earlier that she knew her rights under the law, and there was no point in pushing her to exercise them.

But it meant something that she'd performed the expurgation. And only a fool would walk away from the implications.

Nkata rang off and recounted Lynley's end of the investigation. Barbara listened carefully, looking for connections among the pieces of information they were gathering. When he was done, she said, “The Upman bloke claims he stuffed her on a one-off. But he could be Mr. Oooh-la-la from the postcards and be lying through his teeth, couldn't he?”

“Or lying about what it meant when he had her,” Nkata said. “He could've thought it was something important happening between them. She could've just been doing it for kicks.”

“And when he found out, he did her in? Where was he on Tuesday night, then?”

“Getting a massage near Manchester Airport. For stress, he said.”

Barbara whooped. “That's an alibi I've not heard before.” She slung her bag over her shoulder and jerked her head towards the door. They ducked out into Parkgate Road.

The house that contained Terry Cole's flat was less than five minutes by foot from the pub, and Barbara led Nkata to it. This time when she rang the buzzer next to the tag reading Cole/Thompson, the door catch was released in reply.

Cilia Thompson met them at the top of the stairs. She was dressed for a night out, her metallic silver mini-skirt and matching bustier and beret suggesting an imminent audition for a role in a feminist Wizard of Oz. She said, “I don't have much time.”

Barbara replied, “No problem. We don't need much.” She introduced Nkata and they went inside the flat which, occupying the second floor of the house, had been remodeled into two small bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a loo the size of a larder. Not wanting to encounter another Vi Nevin situation, Barbara said, “We'd like to paw through everything, if that's okay with you. If Terry was into something dodgy, he might have left evidence of it anywhere. He might have hidden it as well.”

Cilla had nothing to hide, she informed them, but she didn't fancy them fingering through her knickers personally. She'd show them every one of her belongings, but that was the extent of it. They could do whatever serious trolling they wanted to do among Terry's lumber.

The rules established, they began in the kitchen, where the cupboards revealed nothing except a predilection for instant macaroni cheese which the flat's occupants appeared to consume by the gross. Several bills lay on the draining board-where what looked like six weeks of crockery was drying-and Nkata examined these and handed them over to Barbara. The telephone bill was respectable but not outrageously high. The electricity usage seemed normal. Neither bill was overdue; neither bill had gone unpaid during the previous billing period. The refrigerator was equally unilluminating. A limp lettuce and a plastic bag of sad-looking Brussels sprouts suggested that the flat's inhabitants hadn't been as conscientious about eating their veg as they should have been. But there was nothing more sinister inside the appliance than a tin of pea soup that was open and appeared to have been half eaten as it was, straight up with no heating. Barbara's stomach lurched. And she'd thought her culinary tastes were questionable.

“We eat out mostly,” Cilia said from the doorway.

“Looks like,” Barbara agreed.

They moved to the sitting room, where they paused and took in its unusual decor. The room appeared to be a showplace for their art. There were several pieces of the same agricultural nature as the larger efforts that Barbara had seen earlier that day in the railway arch studio, marking them as the work of Terry. The other objects- paintings, these-were the obvious results of Cilia's endeavours.

Nkata-having not seen Cilia's mouth fixation given concrete form-whistled quietly in reaction to the dozen or more oral cavities that were explored on canvas in the sitting room. Screaming, laughing, weeping, speaking, eating, slobbering, vomiting, and bleeding were all featured in graphic detail. Cilia had also explored further fantastic possibilities of the orifice in her paintings: Several mouths had fully grown human beings rising from them, most notably members of the Royal Family.

“Very… different,” Nkata commented.

“Munch, however, has nothing to worry about,” Barbara murmured next to him.

There were bedrooms on either side of the sitting room, and they ventured into Cilia's first, with the artist herself leading the way. Aside from a collection of Paddington Bears that overflowed from the top of the chest of drawers and the window sill onto the floor, Cilia's room didn't present any contradiction to the artist herself. Her wardrobe contained the usual colour-splodged garments one would associate with a painter; the milk crate serving as bedside table held the box of condoms that one would expect of the sexually active and sexually cautious young woman in the depressing days of STDs; a considerable collection of CDs met with Barbara's approval and told Nkata how far out of the loop he was when it came to rock ‘n’ roll; a number of copies of What's On and Time Out had pages turned down and galleries with newly mounted shows circled. The walls featured her own art, and the floor had been painted by the artist to reveal more of her singular artistic sensibility. Great flapping tongues dribbled partially masticated food onto naked infants who were