In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (42 page)

“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 your rank as a result of your day trip on the North Sea last June.”

Her mouth clamped shut. Her lips thinned like a spinsters hopes. Nkata let out a heavy breath on the word “damn.”

“Now.” Lynley used the word to gain time. He used the time to bring his temper to heel. “If you'd like to request placement with another DI, Havers, be plain about it. There's work to do.”

Five seconds ticked by. Nkata turned from the window. He and Havers exchanged a look that appeared to mean something to them but to Lynley was inscrutable.

“I'm not requesting another placement,” Havers finally said.

“Then you know what to do.”

She shared another look with Nkata. Then she gave her glance to Lynley. “Sir,” she said politely. And she left the office.

Lynley realised that he hadn't asked her one question regarding her search through the files. But it was a fact that didn't occur to him until he'd replaced Nkata behind his desk. And then he felt that to call her back would be to give her the advantage. Which was something he didn't want to do at that moment.

“We'll take the prostitution angle first,” he told Nkata. “That could give a man in love one hell of an incentive to kill.”

“It'd be ugly for a bloke, sussing out the fact that his woman's on the game.”

“And being on the game in London suggests the possibility of someone sussing it out here in London as well, wouldn't you agree?”

“I got no argument with that.”

“Then I suggest we begin by tracking the London lover,” Lynley finished. “And I've a fairly good idea where to start.”

i Nevin took the postcard from Lynley's fingers and, after glancing at it, set it carefully onto the spotless glass coffee table that served both the buttery sofa and the matching love seat which formed a right angle at one of its corners. She had placed herself on the sofa, leaving the love seat for Lynley and Nkata to crowd themselves onto. Nkata hadn't cooperated with the ploy, however. He'd stationed himself at the door to the maisonette, with his arms crossed and his body proclaiming no escape.

“You're the schoolgirl pictured on the card, aren't you?” Lynley began.

Vi reached for the portfolio she'd showed Havers and Nkata on the previous day. She slid this across the coffee table. “I pose for pictures, Inspector. That's what I do and that's what I get paid for. I don't know who's going to use them for what and I don't really care. As long as I get paid.”

“Are you saying that you're just a model for sexual services that someone else provides?” “That's what I'm saying.” “I see. Then what's the point of having your phone number on the card if you're not the ‘schoolgirl’ in question?”

Her gaze slid away from him. She was quick, fairly well educated, well spoken, and clever, but she hadn't thought quite that far ahead.

“You know, I don't have to talk to you,” she said. “And what I'm doing's not illegal, so please don't act like it is.”

Explaining the finer points of the law to her wasn't his purpose in coming to see her, Lynley told her. But if she was engaged in prostitution—

“Show me where it says on that card that anyone pays me for anything” she demanded.

If, Lynley repeated, she was engaged in prostitution, then he assumed she knew where the ice was thin and where it was not in her behaviour. That being the case—“Am I loitering somewhere. Am I soliciting in a public place?”

That being the case, he continued firmly, he would also assume that Miss Nevin was cognisant of how loosely and generously the word brothel could be defined by a magistrate with little patience with linguistic gymnastics. He glanced round the maisonette lest she not comprehend the full meaning of his comment.

She said, “Cops,” dismissively.

“Indeed” was Lynley's affable reply.

He and Nkata had driven directly to Fulham from New Scotland Yard. They'd found Vi Nevin unloading Sainsbury's carrier bags from a new Alfa Romeo, and when she'd caught a glimpse of Nkata as he eased his lengthy body from the Bentley, she said, “Why're you here again? Why aren't you out looking for Nikki's killer? Look, I don't have time to talk to you. I've an appointment in forty-five minutes.”

“Then I expect you'd like us to be gone in advance,” Lynley had said.

She'd flicked a glance at both men, looking for meaning. She said, “Give me a hand, then,” and passed two loaded carrier bags over to them.

She'd unpacked perishables into a large refrigerator: pâté, Greek olives, prosciutto, Camembert, dolmades …

“Having a party?” Lynley had asked her. “Or is the food part of the … appointment, perhaps?”

Vi Nevin had shut the refrigerator door smartly and walked into the sitting room, where she'd taken up her position on the sofa. There she still sat, a retro-garbed figure in brogues and white socks, turned-up blue jeans, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar at attention, a scarf knotted at the throat, and a ponytail. She looked like a refugee from a James Dean film. All that was missing was the bubble gum.

She did not, however, speak like a refugee from a James Dean film. She might have been dressed like a gum-popping devotee of bop, but she spoke like a woman either born to advantage or self-made to appear that way. More likely the latter, Lynley would think as he interviewed her. Every now and then her careful persona slipped. Just a word here and there or a skewed pronunciation that inadvertently revealed her origins. Still, she wasn't what he would have expected to find at the other end of a phone box postcard advertising sex.

“Miss Nevin,” Lynley said, “I'm not here to strong-arm you. I'm here because a woman's been murdered, and if her murder is somehow connected with her source of income—”

“That's where you always head, isn't it? Right to one of our punters. ‘She's a slag and she got what she was asking for. It's damn lucky she lasted as long as she did, what with her lifestyle and the blokes who take part in it.’ Which is what you'd like to put an end to, isn't it? The lifestyle. So don't tell me what you do or don't intend with regard to my ‘source of income.’” She gazed at him evenly. “If you only knew how many warrant cards get set to one side when a bloke's in a hurry to climb out of his trousers. Hmph. I could name a few names.”

“I'm not interested in your clients. I'm interested in finding Nicola Maiden's killer.”

“Who, you think, is one of her clients. Why won't you admit it? And how do you expect those punters will feel when the cops come calling on them? And what do you think it'll do for business once word gets out that I'm naming names? If I know their names to begin with. And I don't, by the way. We go by first names only, and that's not going to help you much.”

Across the room Nkata took out his notebook, opened it, and said, “We're happy to take what's on offer, miss.”

“Forget it, Constable. I'm not that stupid.”

Lynley leaned towards her. “Then you know how simple it would be for me to shut you down. A uniformed constable walking this street every fifteen minutes would, I think, do some damage to your clients' sense of privacy. As would the word slipped to one or two tabloids who might want to see if anyone worthy of public notice is paying calls on you.”

“You wouldn't dare! I know my rights.”

“None of which preclude the presence of journalists, paparazzi looking for everyone from film stars to members of the Royal Family, or your local bobby who's just keeping the streets safe for elderly women walking their dogs.”