In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner

on my feet. The new shoes're slip-ons, Barbara. They've the loveliest leather braid round the top and the sweetest little tassel dangling over the toes. They're a bit 'spensive, which is why not everyone has them yet, but I know I could wear them forever if I got them. I really could.” She looked so hopeful, brown eyes the size of old tuppence pieces.

Barbara wondered how her father managed to deny her anything. She said in her position of arbiter, “Will you go for a compromise?”

Hadiyyah's brow scrunched as effectively as had done her toes. She said, “What's compromise?”

“An agreement in which both parties get what they want, just not exactly how they expected to get it.”

Hadiyyah thought this over, bouncing her lace-up-clad feet against the ottoman. She said, “All right. I s'pose. But they're really pretty shoes, Barbara. If you saw them, you'd understand.”

“Doubtless,” Barbara said. “You've probably noticed what a fashion hound I am.” She heaved herself to her feet. With a wink at Hadiyyah, she called into the kitchen, “I'd say she's got several months in these, Azhar.”

Hadiyyah looked stricken. She wailed, “Several months?”

“But she'll definitely need another pair before Bonfire Night,” Barbara said meaningfully. She mouthed compromise in Hadiyyah's direction and watched the little girl do the mental maths from September to November. Hadiyyah looked pleased when she'd counted up the weeks.

Azhar came to the kitchen door. He'd tucked a tea towel into his trousers to serve as an apron. In his hand he held a wooden spoon. “You can be that exact with your shoe analysis, Barbara?” he asked soberly.

“Sometimes my talents amaze even myself.”

Curry in the kitchen was just another thing that Azhar appeared to do effortlessly. He accepted no assistance, even with the washing up, saying, “Your presence is the gift you bring to our meal, Barbara. We require nothing else of you,” to her offers of help. Nonetheless, she bullied her way to clearing the dining table, at least. And while he was scrubbing and drying in the kitchen, she entertained his daughter, which was her pleasure.

Hadiyyah pulled Barbara into her bedroom once the table was cleared, declaring that she had “something special and secret to show,” a just-between-us-girls revelation, Barbara assumed. But instead of a collection of film star photos or a few penciled notes passed to her at school, Hadiyyah pulled from beneath her bed a carrier bag whose contents she lovingly eased out onto her counterpane.

“Finished today,” she announced proudly. “In sewing class. I was s'posed to leave it for the display-did you get my invitation to the sewing show, Barbara?-but I told Miss Bateman I'd bring it back nice and clean but that I had to have it to give to Dad. 'cause he wrecked one pair of trousers already. When he was cooking dinner.”

It was a bib apron. Hadiyyah had crafted it from pale chintz on which was printed an endless pattern of mother ducks leading their broods towards a pond with a stand of reeds. The mother ducks all wore identical bonnets. Their little ones each carried a different beach-going utensil under a tiny wing.

“D'you think he'll like it?” Hadiyyah asked anxiously. “The ducks re so sweet, aren't they, but I s'pose for a man… I especially love ducks, see. Dad and I feed them at Regents Park sometimes. So when I saw this material… But I expect I could've chosen something more mannish, couldn't I?”

The thought of Azhar encased in the apron's folds made Barbara want to smile, but she didn't. Instead, she examined the zigzagging seams and the hem with its lopsided, loving hand stitching. She said, “It's perfect. He'll love it.”

“D'you think so? It's my first project, see, and I'm not very good. Miss Bateman wanted me to start with something simpler, like a hankie. But I knew what I wanted to make 'cause Dad wrecked his trousers like I said and I knew he didn't want to wreck any more trousers cooking. Which's why I brought this home to give to him.”

“Shall we do that now, then?” Barbara asked.

“Oh no. It's for tomorrow,” Hadiyyah said. “We've a special day planned, Dad and I. We're to go to the sea. We're to pack a picnic lunch and eat on the sand. I'll give it to him then. As a thank-you for taking me. And afterwards, we'll ride the roller coaster on the pier, and Dad'll play the crane grab for me. He's quite good at the crane grab, is Dad.”

“Yes. I know. I saw him work it once, remember?”

“That's right. You did,” Hadiyyah said brightly. “Would you like to come with us to the sea, then, Barbara? It'll be such a special day. We're taking a picnic lunch. And we'll go to the pleasure pier. And there's the crane grab as well. I'll ask Dad if you can come.” She scampered to her feet, calling, “Dad! Dad! Can Barbara-”

“No!” Barbara interrupted hastily. “Hadiyyah, no. Kiddo, I can't go. I'm in the middle of a case and I've got mountains of work. I shouldn't even be here right now, with all the calls I should've been making before bed. But thanks for the thought. We'll do it another time.”

Hadiyyah stopped, door knob in hand. “We're going to the pleasure pier,” she coaxed.

“I'll be with you in spirit,” Barbara assured her. And she thought about the resilience of children and she marveled at their capacity for taking what came. Considering what had occurred the last time Hadiyyah had been to the sea, Barbara wondered that she wanted to go again. But children aren't like adults, she thought. What they can't endure, they simply forget.

CHAPTER 21

Least we're running round incognito,” was DC Winston Nkatas announcement as they pulled into the Boltons, a small neighbourhood shaped like a rugger ball, sandwiched between the Fulham and Old Brompton roads. It consisted of two curving, leafy streets that formed an oval round the central church of St. Mary the Boltons, and its predominant characteristics were the number of security cameras that were mounted on the exterior walls of the mansions and the ostentatious display of Rolls-Royces, Mercedes-Benz, and Range-Rovers that were tucked behind the iron gates of many of the properties.

When Lynley and Nkata pulled into the Boltons, the streetlamps had not yet switched on and the pavements were largely deserted. The only sign of life came from a cat who slinked along the gutter in pursuit of another slinking feline, and a Filipina-dressed in the anachronistic black-and-white garb of a housemaid-who tucked a handbag under her arm and slid into a Ford Capri across the street from the house that Lynley and Nkata were seeking.

Nkata's remark was in reference to Lynley's Bentley, as perfectly at home in this neighbourhood as it had been in Notting Hill. But other than being in possession of the car, the two detectives couldn't have been more out of place in the area: Lynley for his choice of occupation, so unlikely in a man whose family could trace its roots back to the Conqueror and whose more recent ancestors would have considered the Boltons a step down from their usual haunts, and Nkata for the obvious Caribbean-via-South-Bank-of-the-Thames sound of his voice.

“Don't spect they see much rozzer action here,” Nkata said as he stood surveying the iron railings, the cameras, the alarm boxes, and the intercoms that appeared to be the feature of every dwelling. “But it makes you wonder what the point is-all that money-if you got to wall yourself up to enjoy it.”

“I wouldn't disagree,” Lynley said, and he accepted an Opal Fruit from the detective constable's portable stash, unwrapping it and carefully folding the paper into his pocket so as not to foul the pristine footpath with litter. “Let's see what Sir Adrian Beattie has to say.”

Lynley had recognised the name when Tricia Reeve had spoken it in Notting Hill. Sir Adrian Beattie was the UK's answer to Christiaan Barnard. He'd performed the first heart transplant in England and he'd successfully kept performing them round the world for the last several decades, establishing a record of success that had assured his place in medical history and guaranteed his wealth. This latter was on display in the Boltons: Beattie's home was a fortress of glacially white walls and gridiron windows with a front gate barring entrance to anyone who couldn't provide its inhabitants with an acceptable identity through an intercom from which a disembodied voice demanded, “Yes?” in a tone suggesting that not just any answer would do.

Assuming that New Scotland Yard would have a cachet unavailable to the simple word police, Lynley used their place of employment along with their ranks when he identified himself and Nkata. In reply, the gate clicked ajar. By the time Lynley and Nkata had mounted the six front steps, the door had been opened by a woman wearing an incongruous cone-shaped party hat.

She introduced herself as Margaret Beattie, daughter of Sir Adrian. The family were having a birthday party at