In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

everything. He really wanted me to stay on the computer, just like you ordered. He's absolutely in the clear on this. It just seemed to me that with two of us doing the interview instead of one, we'd be able to-”

Lynley cut her off. “We'll talk about that later.” He gave his attention to the second of the two postcards that had been at the centre of his desk. The telephone number was the same as the number on the schoolgirl card. What was on offer was different, however.

Nikki Temptation was printed prominently at the top of the second card with the words Discover the Mysteries of Domination just beneath the name. And under that suggestion the mysteries themselves were alluded to: a fully equipped torture chamber, a dungeon, a medical room, a school room. Bring Your Toys Or Use Mine was the final enticement. The telephone number followed. There was no picture.

“At least we got the reason they left MKR Financial,” Nkata said. “These birds, they take in anything from fifty quid an hour up to fifteen hundred a night. 'Ccording to what my sources say,” he added quickly as if clarification were needed to keep his reputation unbesmirched. “I had a word with Hillinger in Obscene Publications. Those blokes've seen it all.”

Reluctantly, Lynley saw how the various pieces of information they'd been gathering on Nicola Maiden were beginning to fit together. He said, “The pager was for her clients, then, which explains why her parents didn't know she had one but Upman and Ferrer-both of them men with whom she'd been intimate-did.”

“You mean she was on the game in Derbyshire as well?” Barbara asked. “With Upman and Ferrer?”

“Perhaps. But even if she was having them just for the fun of it, she was a business woman who'd want to keep in touch with her regular clients.”

“Giving them phone sex while she was away?”

“It's possible.”

“But why was she away?”

That was still the question.

“As to those blokes from the Peaks,” Nkata added thoughtfully.

“What about them?”

“There was a blow-up in Islington. I'm wondering about it.”

“Blow-up?”

“Nicola's landlady in Islington heard her having a row with some bloke,” Havers put in from the doorway. “In May. Just before she moved house to Fulham.”

“I'm wondering if we finally got ourselves a rock-solid motive to pin to Julian Britton,” Nkata said. “This bloke said he'd see her dead before he'd let her ‘do it’… something like that. P'rhaps he knew she'd left law college and MKR to go on the game.”

“How would he know?” Lynley countered, testing the theory. “Julian and Nicola were living more than two hundred miles apart. You can't be thinking he came to London, picked up a card in a call box somewhere, phoned the number for a nice session of whips-and-handcuffs, and found Nicola Maiden dressed up to use them. That's more coincidence than one case can bear.”

Havers said, “He could have come to town for a visit without telling her in advance, sir.”

Nkata nodded. “He shows up in Islington and finds his woman tightening the nipple clamps on a bloke who's wearing a leather harness. That'd be something could cause a row.”

That was, indeed, a potential scenario, Lynley agreed. But another existed as well. “There's someone else here in town who might have been just as aggrieved to learn about Nicola's career plans. We need to find her London lover.”

“But couldn't that have been just another one of her clients?”

“Phoning as often as Upman and Ferrer both claim? I doubt it.”

Havers said, “Sir, there's Terry Cole to consider, isn't there?”

“I'm talking about a man who killed her, Constable, not about a man who was killed alongside her.”

“I'm not suggesting Cole as her London lover,” Havers said, her voice uncharacteristically careful. “I meant Cole as Cole. To look at. To talk about. We've got our connection between them now-Maiden and Cole. Obviously, he was placing cards for her just like he was doing for the other tarts. But he can't have gone all the way to Derbyshire to collect more cards from her to put in call boxes, especially since she wasn't in London to take calls from anyone who picked up her cards. So what was he doing there in the first place? There must be a further tie between them.”

“Cole's hardly the point at the moment.”

“How can you say that? He's dead, Inspector. Do we need a bigger point?”

Lynley shot her a look. Nkata spoke quickly, as if to head off a hovering confrontation. “What if Cole was sent there to kill her? And he ended up getting killed himself? Or he was trying to warn her about something? Giving her the word to expect some kind of danger.”

“Then why not just phone her?” Barbara countered. “Does it even make sense that he'd hop on his motorcycle and roar up to Derbyshire to warn her about something?” She took a step away from the door, as if getting closer to them could somehow win them to her way of thinking. “The girl had a pager, Winston. If you're going to argue that Terry trekked all the way up to the Peaks because he couldn't get her by phone, why didn't he just page her? If there was danger that she needed to know about, there was too much of a chance it would get to her before Cole himself did.”

“Which is what happened,” Nkata pointed out.

“Right. The worst happened, and both of them died. Both of them. And I say we'd be wise to start thinking of them that way: as a unit, not as a coincidence.”

“And what I say,” Lynley said meaningfully, “is that your assignment's waiting for you, Havers. Thank you for your input. I'll let you know if I want more.”

“But, sir-”

“Constable?” The way he said the word made it more than her title. At Lynley's desk Nkata stirred. He seemed to be hoping Havers would look his way.

She didn't. But the hand holding her notebook fell to her side, and assurance was gone from her voice when she went on. “Sir, I just think we need to work out exactly what Cole was doing in Derbyshire. When we've got the reason for his trip, we'll have our killer. I can feel that. Can't you?”

“Your feeling has been noted.”

Her bottom teeth chewed at her upper lip. She looked towards Nkata at last, as if hoping for direction. The other DC raised his eyebrows slightly, with a cock of his head towards the office door, perhaps telling her that the course of wisdom suggested she hot-foot it back to the computer. She didn't take his meaning to heart. She said to Lynley, “Can I follow it, sir?”

“Follow what?”

“The Cole end of things.”

“Havers, you have an assignment. And you've been told to return to it. When you've completed your work with CRIS, there's a report I want you to deliver to St. James. After you accomplish that, I'll give you another assignment.”

“But don't you see that if he went all the way to Derbyshire to meet her, there's got to be something more between them?”

Nkata said, “Barb…” like a cautious admonition.

“He had wads of dosh,” she persisted. “Wads of it, Inspector. All right. Okay. It could have come from the card business. But he also had cannabis in his flat. And a big commission that he talked about. To his mum and sister, to Mrs. Baden, to Cilia Thompson. I thought at first he was blowing smoke, but since the card boy business can't even begin to explain what he was doing in Derbyshire-”

“Havers, I'm not going to tell you again.”

“But, sir-”

“God damn it. No.” Lynley felt the ground fracturing beneath his hold on his temper. The woman's obstinacy was working on him like a match put to dry tinder. “If you're trying to suggest that someone followed him all the way to Derbyshire with the express intention of slicing open his arteries, that isn't on. Every piece of information we've come across takes us straight to the Maiden girl, and if you can't see that, then you've lost more than merely