In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

Lynley said, “Mrs. Reeve, we know exactly what MKR Financial Management is fronting. We know that your husband hires students to work as escorts and prostitutes for him. We know that Nicola Maiden was one of those students and that she left your husband's employ along with Vi Nevin to set up in business on her own. The information we have right now can lead directly to charges against you and your husband, and I expect you're well aware of that. So if you'd like to avoid being charged, tried, sentenced, and locked up, I suggest you cooperate straightaway.”

She looked rigid. Her lips hardly moved when she said, “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know about your husband's relationship with Nicola Maiden. Pimps are known for-”

“He isn't a pimp!”

“-frequently displaying displeasure if one of their stable decides to break away from them.”

“That's not what it's like. That's not how it was.”

“Really?” Lynley asked. “How was it, then? Vi and Nicola decided to start their own business, which cut out your husband. But they did so without informing him. He can't have liked that very much, once he sussed it out.”

“You're getting it wrong.” She went to the ornate desk and out of a drawer she took a packet of Silk Cut. She shook one out and lit it. The phone began to ring. She glanced down at it, reached forward to press a button, stopped herself at the final moment. After twenty double rings, it was silent. But less than ten seconds later it started up again. She said, “The computer should be getting that. I can't think why…” And with an uneasy look in the direction of the police, she snatched up the receiver and said tersely, “Global,” into it. Then after a moment of listening, and spoken in the most pleasant of tones she said, “It depends what you want, actually… Yes. That shouldn't be a problem at all. May I have your number, please? I'll ring you back shortly.” She scribbled on a paper. That done, she looked up defiantly as if to say Prove it, to what Lynley was thinking about the conversation that she'd just had.

He was happy to oblige her. “Global,” Lynley said. “That's the name of the escort agency, Mrs. Reeve? Global what? Global Dating? Global Desires? What?”

“Global Escorts. And providing an educated escort to a businessman in town for a conference isn't illegal.”

“Living off immoral earnings, however, is. Mrs. Reeve, do you really want the police to take possession of your account books? Assuming, of course, that there are account books for MKR Financial Management in the first place? We can do that, you know. We can ask for documentation of every pound you've made. And once we're through with our bit of research, we can hand everything over to the Inland Revenue so that their chaps can make certain you've donated your fair share to the support of the government. How does that sound to you?”

He gave her time to ponder. The telephone went again. After three double rings, it switched onto another line with a soft click. An order being taken elsewhere, Lynley thought. By mobile, remote control, or satellite. Wasn't progress a wonderful thing.

Tricia seemed to reach some sort of realisation. Obviously, she knew that Global Escorts and the position of the Reeves were compromised at this point: One word from Lynley to the Inland Revenue or even to the Ladbroke Grove police stations vice boys, and the Reeves’ entire way of life was on the chopping block. And that didn't even begin to address what could happen to them once a search of the premises unearthed whatever mood-altering substance was squirreled away somewhere in the house, waiting to work its magic on Tricia. All this knowledge seemed to settle upon her like soot from a fire she'd lit herself.

She gathered herself together. “All right. If I give you a name-if I give you the name- it can't have come from me. Is that understood? Because if word gets out about an indiscretion committed at this end of the business…” She let the rest of the sentence hang.

Indiscretion was a unique way of labeling it, Lynley thought. And why in God's name did she think that she was in any position to bargain with him? He said, “Mrs. Reeve, the business-as you call it-is finished.”

“Martin,” she said, “won't see it that way.”

“Martin,” Lynley countered, “will find himself held on charges if he doesn't.”

“And Martin will ask for bail. He'll be out on the street in twenty-four hours. Where will you be by then, Inspector? No closer to the truth, I expect.” She might have looked like Barbie, she might have sauteed part of her brain in drugs, but somewhere along the line she'd learned a bit about bargaining, and she was doing it now with a fair amount of expertise. Lynley reckoned that her husband would have been proud of her. She had no legal leg to stand on, and she stood there anyway, pretending she had. He had to admire her chutzpah, if nothing else. She said, “I can give you a name-the name, as I've said-and you can go on your way. I can say nothing and you can search the house, cart me off to gaol, arrest my husband, and be not an inch closer to Nicola's killer. Oh, you'll have our books and our records. But you can't expect that we're so stupid as to list our punters by name. So what will you gain? And how much time will you lose?”

“I'm prepared to be reasonable if the information's good. And in the time it takes me to ascertain the information's viability, I would assume you and your husband would be considering where to relocate your business. Melbourne comes to mind, what with the change in law.”

“That might take some time.”

“As will the verification of information.”

Tit for tat. He awaited her decision. She finally made it and took up a pencil from the top of the desk. “Sir Adrian Beattie,” she said as she wrote. “He was mad about Nicola. He was willing to pay whatever she wanted if he could keep her all to himself. I don't expect he much liked the thought of her expanding her business, do you?”

She handed over the address. It was in the Boltons.

It appeared, Lynley thought, that they had the London lover at last.

When Barbara Havers found the note on her door upon her arrival home that evening, she remembered the sewing lesson with a jolt. She said, “Bloody hell. Damn it,” and berated herself for having forgotten. True, she was involved in a case, and Hadiyyah would surely understand that. But Barbara hated to think that she might have been the cause of disappointment to her little friend.

You are cordially invited to view the work of Miss Jane Bateman's Beginning Seamstresses, the note announced. It was meticulously printed in a childish hand that Barbara recognised. A drooping cartoonish sunflower was sketched on the bottom. Alongside this was the date and time. Barbara made a mental note to enter both on her calendar.

She'd put in another couple of hours at the Yard after her conversation with Neil Sitwell. She'd been champing at the bit to start phoning the numbers of every employee listed under King-Ryder Productions on the roster she'd been given earlier, but she trod the path of caution lest Inspector Lynley turn up and demand to know what she'd gathered from the Yard computer. Which was sod bloody all in spades, of course. To hell with him, she'd begun to think during her eighth cumulative hour at the terminal. If he wanted a flaming report on every bleeding individual with whom DI Andrew Maiden might have rubbed elbows in his years undercover, she'd damn well give it to him by the shovelful. But the information was going to get him bugger all that would lead him to the Derbyshire killer. She would have bet her own life on that.

She'd left the Yard round half past four, stopping at Lynley's office to drop off a report and a personal note. The report made her point, she liked to think, without stooping to rub his nose or otherwise dabble in the obvious. I'm right, you're wrong, but I'll play your stupid game were not words that she needed to say to him. Her time would come, and she thanked her stars that the manner in which Lynley was orchestrating the case actually left her more of a free hand than he realised. The personal note that she left with the report assured Lynley in the most polite of terms that she was taking to Chelsea the post-mortem file prepared by Dr. Sue Myles in Derbyshire. Which was what Barbara did as soon as she left New Scotland Yard.

She found Simon St. James and his wife in the back garden of their Cheyne Row house, where St. James was watching Deborah crawl on her hands and knees along the brick path edging a herbaceous border that ran the length of the garden wall. She had a pump action sprayer that she was dragging along as she moved, and every few feet she stopped and energetically attacked the ground with a rainfall of pungent insecticide.

She was saying, “Simon, there are billions of them. And even when I spray, they keep moving about. Lord. If there's ever a nuclear war, ants will be the only survivors.”

St. James, reclining on a chaise longue with a wide-brimmed hat shading his face, said, “Did you get that section by the hydrangeas, my love? It looks as if you missed that bit by the fuchsia as well.”

“Honestly. You're maddening. Would you rather do this yourself? I hate to be disturbing your peace of mind