In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (41 page)

“It was risking it all,” she said. “There's no going back after a certain point with someone, is there? But I don't regret the risk for a moment. Do you, Tommy?”

He felt a rush of relief. “Then we're at peace.”

“Were we anything else?”

“It seemed—” He hesitated, uncertain how to describe the sea change he was experiencing between them. He said, “We've got to expect a period of adjustment, haven't we? We aren't children. We had lives that were independent of each other before we married, so it's going to take some time to adjust to lives that include each other all the time.”

“Had we.” She said it as a statement, reflectively. She looked up from the wallpaper samples, to him.

“Had we what?”

“Independent lives. Oh, I see that you did. Who would ever argue with that? But as to the other half of the equation …” She made an aimless gesture at the samples. “I would have chosen flowers without a moment's hesitation. But flowers, I'm told by Charlie, are twee. You know, I never actually considered myself hopeless in the arena of interior design. Perhaps I've been kidding myself about that.”

Lynley hadn't known her for more than fifteen years to fail in understanding her meaning now. “Helen, I was angry. Angry, I'm the first to climb on the highest horse I can find. But as you pointed out, what I said was words. There's no more truth in them than there's truth in suggesting I'm the soul of sensitivity. Which, as you know, I'm not. Full stop.”

As he spoke, she'd begun setting the floral samples to one side. As he finished, she paused. She looked at him, head cocked, face gentle. “You don't really understand what I'm talking about, do you? But then, how could you? In your position I wouldn't understand what I was talking about either.”

“I do understand. I corrected your language. I was angry because you weren't taking my side, so I responded as I believed you'd responded: to the form instead of to the substance beneath it. In the process, I hurt you. And I'm sorry for that.”

She got to her feet, sheets of wallpaper held to her chest. “Tommy, you described me as I am,” she said simply. “I left the house because I didn't want to listen to a truth I've avoided for years.”

omen had always been a mystery to him. Helen was a woman. Ergo, Helen would always be a mystery. So Lynley thought as he worked his way from Belgravia to Westminster and New Scotland Yard. He'd wanted to continue their discussion, but she'd said gently, “Tommy darling, you've come back to London with work to do haven't you? You must do it. Go on. We'll talk later.”

A man who'd generally managed to obtain what he desired in fairly short order after desiring it, Lynley chafed at any kind of postponement. But Helen was right. He'd already tarried at home longer than he'd originally intended. So he kissed her and set off for the Yard.

He found Nkata on the telephone in his office. He was jotting something into his notebook, saying, “Describe it for me as best you can, then … Well, what sort of collar does it have, f'r instance? Are there snaps or a zip? … Look, anything you give me is more than I have right now …. Hmmm? Yeah. Okay. Right. I'll hold …. Put her on as well. Cheers.” He looked up as Lynley entered the room. He began to remove himself from the chair behind the desk.

Lynley waved him back into place. He went round to stand behind him, where he could see a column of postcards that had been arranged on his leather blotter. The cards ran along one edge of this, samples of the lot that—according to Nkata—had been taken from Terry Cole's flat.

Lynley saw that punishment was offered on some of the cards; domination was promised on others; still others suggested that one's ultimate fantasies could be fulfilled. Mention was made of bubble baths, massages, video services, torture chambers. Some cards offered the use of animals; a few noted that costumes could be provided. Many had photographs depicting such delights as were on offer from the Transsexual Black She-Male or The Ultimate Domina or a Hot Stunning Thai Girl In short, there was something for every taste, inclination, and perversion. And since the cards looked too fresh from the printer to have spent any time Blu Tacked to the walls of a phone box prior to being collected by a sweaty-palmed teenager with masturbation in mind, the only conclusion to be reached from the presence of several thousand of such cards beneath his bed was that Terry Cole had not been a collector but, rather, a distributor—a part of the great machine that peddled sex in London.

This, at least, explained the cash that Cilia Thompson claimed the boy had carried. Card boys who worked quickly enough putting up cards in phone boxes all round central London could earn a substantial living because the going rate was one hundred pounds for every five hundred cards the boy managed to place. And the service of a card boy was absolutely essential: Agents of British Telecom removed the cards daily, so they always had to be replaced.

Two of these cards had been isolated from the column on Lynley's blotter and lay in the centre of his desk. One displayed the photo of a putative schoolgirl; one bore only print. Lynley picked them up and examined them—feeling heart-sore—as Nkata continued his call.

SHHH was printed across the top of the first. And below the photograph ran the words Don't Tell Mummy What's On After School! The picture itself showed a rucksack with books tumbling out of it and bending from the waist to gather them up was a girl, her bum pointing towards the camera. She wasn't one's average schoolgirl: Her pleated skirt was hiked up to display black thong knickers and thigh-high black stockings with lace round the top. She was looking coyly over her shoulder at the camera, blonde hair tousled and tumbling round her face. Beneath her stiletto-heeled shoes was a telephone number with a hand-scrawled ring me! next to it.

“Christ,” Lynley whispered. And when Nkata ended his phone call, he said as if an explanation in the light of day would negate the one he'd heard via phone from the constable in the dead of night, “Take me through it the entire situation beginning to end another time, Winnie.”

“Let me fetch Barb. The brainwork was hers.”

“Havers?” Lynley's tone stopped the other man from picking up the phone. “Winston, I told her I wanted her on the computer. You assured me that's what she was doing. Why's she involved in this end of the investigation?”

Nkata showed his palms, empty and innocent. He said, “She's not involved. I'd the box of cards in your motor when I came back here last evening from Battersea. I called in to see how she was doing on CRIS. She asked to take the cards along with her when she went home. To have a look through them. The rest … She can tell you how it played out.”

Nkata's face wore the guileless expression of a child at the knees of Father Christmas, declaring that there was more to the story than had been revealed. Lynley sighed. “Fetch her, then.”

Nkata reached for the phone. He punched in a few numbers and while waiting for the connection, said solemnly, “She's working CRIS right now. Been there since six this morning.”

“I'll kill the fatted calf,” Lynley replied.

Nkata, not given to biblical exegesis or allusion, said, “Right,” uncertainly. And then into the phone, “Guv's here, Barb.” That was the extent of it.

While they waited for Havers, Lynley examined the second postcard. He didn't want to think of the anguish that lay ahead for the parents of the murdered girl, however, so he gave his attention back to Nkata. “Anything else this morning, Winnie?”

“I'd a page from the Coles. Missus and the sister. That was the sister I was talking to just now.”

“And?”

“The boy's jacket's missing.”

“Jacket?”

“Right. A black leather jacket. He always wore it when he rode the big bike. When you gave Mrs. Cole that list of the kids effects—those receipts, remember?—the jacket wasn't on it. They think someone pinched it at the station in Buxton.”

Lynley recalled the photographs of the crime scene. He thought about the evidence that he'd looked through in Buxton. Then he said, “Are they certain about the jacket?”

“Generally wore it, they claimed. And he wouldn't've ridden all the way north in a T-shirt, which's all the covering it looked like he had … from the receipts, that is. He wouldn't've ever ridden on the motorway in only a T-shirt, they said.”

“It hasn't been cold though.”

“The jacket was for more'n warmth. It was also protection if he accidentally pranged the bike on the road. Wouldn't get so cut up with the jacket on, they explained. So where is it is what they want to know.”

“It wasn't among his things in the flat?”

“Barb went through his clobber, so she can tell you—” Nkata stopped himself abruptly. He had the grace to look abashed.

“Ah.” Lynley said, the syllable rich with meaning.

“She worked the computer half the night afterwards,” Nkata said hastily.

“Did she indeed. And whose idea was it that she accompany you to the Cole boy's flat?”

Havers’ advent saved Nkata from having to reply. She arrived as if on cue, all business with a notebook in her hand. She looked as professionally attired as Lynley had ever seen her.

She didn't flop into the chair in front of his desk as usual. She stood by the open door, her heels pressed against it as if holding her body at a respectful attention. To Lynley's question about the jacket, she responded after a moment in which she seemed to be attempting to read her fellow DCs face as if it were a barometer that would enable her to assess the climate in Lynley's office.

“The kid's gear?” she said carefully when Nkata's earnest nod towards Lynley apparently told her it was at least moderately safe to reveal that she'd once again been derelict in her duties. “Well. Hmmm.”

“We'll deal later with what you were supposed to be doing, Havers,” Lynley told her. “Was a black leather jacket among the boy's clothes?”

She managed to look uncomfortable, Lynley noted. There was a mercy in that. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. Everything was black, she reported. There were sweaters, shirts, T-shirts, and jeans in his clothes cupboard. But a jacket hadn't been among them, not a leather one at least.

“There was a lighter jacket though, a windcheater,” she said. “And a coat. Really long, like something from the Regency period. That was it.” A pause. And then she ventured, “Why?”

Nkata told her.

“Someone must have taken it from the crime scene” was her immediate assessment. To which she added, “Sir,” in Lynley's direction as if the respectful utterance might indicate a newly found reverence for authority.

Lynley thought about what her conjecture implied. Two garments now were missing from the crime scene: a jacket and a waterproof. So were they back to two killers?

“P'rhaps the jacket points the way to the killer,” Havers offered as if reading his mind.

“If our killers worried about forensic evidence, then he should have stripped the body completely. What does taking only the jacket gain him?”

“Coverage?” Nkata said.

“He'd have had the raingear to hide the blood on him.”

“But if he knew he had to stop somewhere after the killing—or if he knew he'd be seen on the route back to his digs—he couldn't exactly have a waterproof on. Why would he be wearing it? It wasn't raining on Tuesday night.” Havers still stood at the doorway. And her questions and statement were careful, as if she'd finally and gratifyingly come to realise just how much a probationary figure she was.

There was sense in her remarks. Lynley acknowledged this with a nod. He went on to the postcards, saying as he used them to gesture with, “Let me hear it all again.”

Havers shot a look at Nkata as if she expected him to take the bit. He read her meaning and said, “I could do a quick A to zed off the top of my head. But I'd miss fifteen letters in between. You take it.”

“Right.” She stayed at the door. “I'd been thinking how any one of that lot”—with a nod to the cards on Lynley's desk—“might have a motive to murder Terry Cole. What if he'd been cheating them? What if he collected their cards, took their hundred pounds each, and never put up the cards at all? Or at least not the number he said.” After all, she pointed out, how did a prostitute really know where—or even if—her cards were tacked up, unless she went out personally to check on them? And even if she walked round central London making stops at every phone box she came to, what was to prevent Terry Cole from claiming that the BT contract cleaners were sweeping the boxes free of cards just as fast as he could distribute them?

“So I decided to give each of them a call, to see what they had to say about Terry.” She got very little joy from the calls she'd made, however, and she had just begun to ring the number advertised on the schoolgirl card, when she'd given the picture closer scrutiny and realised the girl looked awfully familiar. Fairly certain about her identity, she'd phoned the number on the card and said, “Is that Vi Nevin, then?” when her call was answered. “DC Barbara Havers here,” she'd said to the young woman. “I've one or two points to clear up, if you have the time. Or should I call in in the morning?”

On the other end of the line, Vi Nevin hadn't even questioned how Havers had come to have her number. She'd merely said in her sculpted RADA voice, “It's after midnight. Do you know that, Constable? Are you trying to intimidate me?”

“She looks young enough to play the part of a schoolgirl in some punter's sex fantasy,” Havers concluded. “And from the looks of her digs yesterday, I'd say—” She winced and halted, obviously realising what she'd just revealed about the rest of her activities on the previous day. “Inspector, listen. I talked Winnie into letting me be part of 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.