previous Tuesday night. She'd sounded sultry, sexy, and seductive over the phone when Hanken had spoken to her from the Hilton lobby. But she'd turned out to be a thirteen-stone Valkyrie in medical whites with the hands of a rugby player and hips the width of a lorry's front bumper.
She'd confirmed Upman's alibi for the night of the Maiden girl's murder. He had indeed been “seen to” by Miss Freda, as she was called, and he'd given her his usual generous tip when she'd finished tenderising his knotted tendons. “Tips just like a Yank,” she informed Hanken in a friendly fashion. “Has done from the first, so I'm always glad to see him.”
He was one of her regulars, Miss Freda explained. He made the drive twice a month, at least. “Lots of stress in his line of work,” she said. Upman's appointment had been for one hour only. She'd seen to the solicitor in his room, from half past seven.
That, Hanken reckoned, gave Upman plenty of time to trot from Manchester back to Calder Moor afterwards, to dispatch the Maiden girl and her companion easily by half past ten, and to scurry back to the Airport Hilton to resume his stay and firm up his alibi. All of which kept the solicitor in the game.
And a phone call from Lynley made Upman a principal player, at least to Hanken.
He got the call on his mobile at home, where he'd just laid out the pieces of Bella's swing set on the floor of the garage and was standing back to study them as he counted the number of screws and bolts that had been included in the package. Lynley reported that his officers had tracked down a young woman who was Nicola Maiden's new flatmate, and he himself had just completed an interview with her. She'd maintained that there was no lover in London-an assertion that Lynley appeared to dispute-and she'd also suggested that the police have another chat with Upman if they wanted to know why Nicola Maiden had decided to spend the summer in Derbyshire. To this, Hanken said, “We only have Upman's word for it that the girl had a lover in the South, Thomas.” To which Lynley replied, “But it doesn't make sense that she'd drop out of law college in May yet spend the summer working for Upman… unless the two of them had something going on together. Do you have time to wring more information from him, Peter?”
Hanken was happy-delighted, in fact-to wring away at the smarmy sod, but he sought some firm ground on which to base another interview with the Buxton solicitor, who so far hadn't called on his own lawyer to stand by his side during questioning but was likely to do so should he begin to believe that the investigation was tunneling in his direction.
“Nicola had a visitor just before she moved house from Islington to Fulham. This would have been on the ninth of May,” Lynley explained. “A man. They had an argument. They were overheard. The man said he'd see her dead before he let her do it.”
“Do what?” Hanken asked.
And Lynley told him. Hanken listened to the story with a fair amount of incredulity. Midway through, he said, “Hell's bells. Damn. Hang on, Thomas. I'll need to take some notes,” and he went from the garage into the kitchen, where his wife was supervising his two daughters’ lunch while his infant son dozed in a baby carrier that was set on the work top. Clearing off a space next to Sarah, who'd separated her egg sandwich into halves, which she was smearing on her face, he said, “Right. Go on,” and began jotting down places, activities, and names. He whistled softly as Lynley told the tale of Nicola Maiden's clandestine life as a London prostitute. Dazed, he looked at his own young daughters as Lynley explained the dead girl's speciality. He found that he felt torn by the need to make accurate notes and the desire to crush Bella and Sarah to his heart-grimy with egg mayonnaise though they were- as if by that action he could ensure that their future would be blessed with the safety of normalcy. It was, in fact, in consideration of his girls that Hanken said, “Thomas, what about Maiden?” when Lynley had concluded his remarks by explaining that his next move was going to be to track down Vi Nevin's former flatmate Shelly Platt, sender of the anonymous letters. “If he somehow found out that his daughter was turning tricks in London… Can you imagine what that would have done to him?”
“I think it's more profitable to consider what that knowledge would have done to a man who thought he was her lover. Upman and Britton-even Ferrer-seem far more likely than Andy for the role of Nemesis.”
“Not when you consider how a father thinks: ‘I gave her life.’ What if he also thought her life was his to take away?”
“We're talking about a cop, Peter, a decent cop. An
“Right. Fine. But this situation has sod all to do with Maidens career. What if he went to London? What if he stumbled on the truth? What if he tried to talk her out of her lifestyle-and I want to be sick even calling it a lifestyle-but failed and knew there was only a single way to end it? Because, Thomas, if he didn't end it, the girl's mum would have discovered it eventually and Maiden couldn't abide the thought of what that would do to the woman he loves.”
“That goes for the others as well,” Lynley countered. “Upman and Britton. They'd want to talk her out of it. And with far more reason. Christ, Peter. Sexual jealousy goes a greater distance than protecting a mother from having to hear the truth about her child. You must see that.”
“He found that car. Out of sight. Behind a wall. In the middle of the God damn bloody White Peak.”
“Pete, the children…” Hanken's wife admonished him, delivering glasses of milk to their daughters.
Hanken nodded in acknowledgement as Lynley said, “I know this man. He doesn't have a violent bone in his body. He had to leave the Yard, for God's sake, because he couldn't stomach the job any longer. So where and when did he develop the capacity-the blood lust-to beat in his own child's skull? Let's do some digging on Up-man and Britton-and Ferrer if we have to. They're unknown quantities. There are at least two hundred people at the Yard who can testify that Andy Maiden isn't. Now, the flatmate-Vi Nevin-is insisting we talk to Upman again. She may be temporising, but I say we start with him.”
It was, Hanken realised, the logical place to begin. But something about tackling the enquiry from that direction didn't feel right to him. “Are you personalising this in some way?”
“I might very well ask the same of you” was Lynley's reply. Before Hanken could argue, the London DI concluded the call with the information that Terry Cole's black leather jacket was missing from the personal effects Usted on the receipt that had been handed over to his mother on the previous morning. “It makes sense to have a thorough look for it among the crime scene evidence before we rally the troops,” he pointed out. And then, as if he wished to smooth over their disagreement, he added, “What do you think?”
“I'll see to that at this end,” Hanken said.
The call concluded, he looked at his family: Sarah and Bella shredding their sandwiches and dipping the torn bits of bread into their milk, PJ awakening and beginning to fret for his own lunch, and Hanken's own darling Kathleen unbuttoning her blouse, loosening the nursing bra, and raising their son to her swollen breast. They were a miracle to him, his little family. He would, he knew, go to any extreme to keep them from harm.
“We're richly blessed, Katie,” he said to his wife as she sat at the table where Bella was inserting a carrot stick into her sister's right nostril. Sarah screamed in protest and startled PJ. He turned from his mother's milk and began to wail.
Kathleen shook her head wearily. “It's all in the definition, I dare say” She nodded at his mobile. “Are you off again, then?”
“Afraid so, darling.”
“What about the s-w-i-n-g-s?”
“I'll have the set up in time. I promise.” He took the carrots away from his daughters, grabbed a dish cloth from the sink, and mopped up some of the mess they'd made on the kitchen table.
His wife cooed, crooned, and comforted PJ. Bella and Sarah made tentative peace.
After directing DC Mott to paw through everything they'd taken from the murder site, and after phoning the lab to make sure Terry Cole's jacket hadn't been accidentally omitted from the list of clothing sent onward for analysis, Hanken set off to duel with Will Upman once more. He found the solicitor in the narrow garage that abutted his home in Buxton. He was casually clad in jeans and a flannel shirt, and he squatted next to a fine-looking mountain bike whose chain and gear cluster he was attending to with a hose pipe, a small spray bottle of solvent, and a plastic bristle brush with one end shaped like a crescent.
He wasn't alone. Leaning against the bonnet of his car, her eyes fixed on him with the unmistakable hunger of a woman desperate for a commitment, a petite brunette was saying to him, “You
Upman said, “I couldn't have done, darling. I'd always planned to clean the bike. So if you're ready for lunch this
