defecating onto other great flapping tongues. It was certainly one for Freud.
Cilia said, “I told Mrs. Baden I'd paint over it when I move out,” in apparent response to the detectives' failure to keep their expressions dispassionate. “She likes to support talent. She says so. You can ask her.”
“We'll take your word for it,” Barbara said.
They found nothing in the bathroom save a grubby and unhygienic ring round the bath which Nkata clucked at mournfully. From there they went to Terry Cole's bedroom with Cilia dogging their heels as if worried that they might nick one of her masterpieces if she didn't keep watch.
Nkata took a post at the chest of drawers, Barbara at the wardrobe. There, she discovered the gripping fact that Terry Cole's preference in colours was black, and he carried this theme out in T-shirts, jerseys, jeans, jackets, and footwear. While Nkata slid open drawers behind her, Barbara began going through the jeans and the jackets in the hope that they might reveal something cogent. She found only two possibilities among the cinema ticket stubs and crumpled tissues. The first was a scrap of paper with
“Something here,” Nkata said behind her.
She swung round and saw that he'd taken a humidor from the bottom drawer of the chest. He had it open. “What?” she said.
He tilted it towards her. Cilia craned forward. She said in a rush, “That's none of mine, you lot,” when she saw what was in it.
The humidor contained cannabis. Several lids by the look of it. And from the drawer from which he'd taken the humidor, Nkata pulled out a palm-size bong, rolling papers, and a large freezer bag sealed upon at least another kilo of the weed.
“Ah,” Barbara said. She eyed Cilia suspiciously.
“I said,” Cilia countered. “I wouldn't've let you go through the flat if I knew he had that stuff, would I? I don't touch it. I don't touch anything that could cock up the process.”
“The process?” Nkata looked quizzical.
“My art,” Cilia said. “The creative process.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “God knows you don't want to mess about with that. Wise move on your part.”
Cilia heard no irony. She said, “Talent's precious. You don't want to… like waste it.”
“Are you saying this”-with a nod at the cannabis-“is why Terry couldn't make it as an artist?”
“Like I told you at the studio, he never put enough into it-his art, that is-to get anything out of it. He didn't want to work at it like the rest of us. He didn't think he had to. Maybe this is why.”
“Because he was high too often?” Nkata asked.
Cilia looked uncomfortable for the first time. She shifted from foot to foot on her platform shoes. “Look. It's like… He's dead and all that and I'm sorry about it. But truth's the truth. His money came from somewhere. This is probably it.”
“There's not much here if he's pushing,” Nkata said to Barbara.
“Maybe he's got a cache somewhere else.”
But aside from a lumpy overstuffed chair, the only other article of furniture in the room that afforded a hiding place was the bed. It seemed too obvious to be likely, but Barbara went through the manoeuvre anyway: She lifted the edge of an old chenille counterpane. Doing so, she exposed the side of a cardboard box that had been shoved beneath the bed.
“Ah,” Barbara said. “Perhaps, perhaps…” She crouched and drew the box towards her. Its flaps were tucked in, but they weren't sealed. She separated them and examined the box's contents.
They were, she discovered, postcards, several thousand of them. But they were definitely not the kind that one sent home to the family while on one's yearly hols in regions afar. These postcards weren't for greeting purposes. They weren't for sending messages. They weren't souvenirs. What they were, however, was the first indication of who had killed Terry Cole and why.
A detective constable had been sent to fetch the Maidens to Buxton for their inspection of their daughter's effects. Hanken had pointed out that a mere request for their presence would likely be met with a postponement on their part, since the dinner hour was fast approaching and the Maidens would claim to be tied up seeing to the needs of their guests. “If we want an answer tonight, we fetch them,” Hanken said not unreasonably.
An answer that night would be helpful, Lynley concurred. So while he and Hanken tucked into
“Have Mott sign out the girl's belongings to you,” Hanken directed her from his mobile. “Lay them out in room four and wait for us.”
They were no more than five minutes from Buxton station. Hanken took his time about seeing to the bill. He wanted to make the Maidens sweat if he could, he explained to Lynley. He liked everyone on edge in an investigation because one never knew what a case of nerves could turn up.
“I thought you'd switched your interest to Will Upman,” Lynley remarked to his colleague.
“I'm interested in everyone. I want them all on edge,” Hanken replied. “It's a treat what people will suddenly remember when the pressure builds.”
Lynley didn't point out that Andy Maiden's experience with SO 10 had probably conditioned him to weathering a great deal more pressure than would develop during quarter of an hour's wait for two colleagues inside a police station. This was, after all, still Hanken's case, and he was proving himself to be an accommodating colleague.
“I'm sorry to have missed you this afternoon,” Lynley told Nan Maiden when she and her husband were ushered into room four, where he and Hanken stood on either side of a large pine table. On this, Nicola's possessions had been laid out by DC Stewart, who remained by the door with a notepad in her hand.
“I'd gone out for a bike ride,” Nan Maiden said.
“Andy said you were on Hathersage Moor. Is that a tough ride?”
“I like the exercise. It's not as rough as it sounds.”
“Run into anyone else while you were out there?” Hanken asked.
Andy Maiden's arm went round his wife's shoulders. She replied evenly enough. “Not today. I had the moor to myself.”
“Go out often, do you? Mornings, afternoons? Nights as well?”
Nan Maiden frowned. “I'm sorry, are you asking me-” Her husband's grip, tightening on her shoulders, was enough to stop her.
Andy Maiden said, “I think you wanted us to look through Nicola's belongings, Inspector.”
He and Hanken observed each other across the width of the table. By the door, DC Stewart glanced between them, her pencil poised. Outside the building, a car alarm went off.
Hanken was the one to blink. He said, “Have a go,” with a nod at the articles on the table. “Is there anything missing? Or anything not hers?”
The Maidens moved slowly, inspecting each item. Nan Maiden reached out and fingered a navy sweater with a strip of ivory defining its neckline.
She said, “The neck wasn't right… the way it lay on her skin. I wanted to change it, but she wouldn't have that. She said, ‘You made it, Mum, and that's what counts.’ But I wish I'd fixed it. It would've been no trouble.” She blinked several times, and her breathing became shallow. “I don't see anything. I'm sorry. I'm being so little help.”
Andy Maiden put his hand on the back of his wife's neck and said, “A few moments more, love.” He urged her along the table. He, however, rather than she, was the one to notice what wasn't among the items gathered from the scene of the crime. “Nicola's rain gear,” he told them. “It's blue, hooded. A waterproof. It isn't here.”
Hanken shot a glance at Lynley. Corroboration for your theory, his expression said.
