In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (45 page)

“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 exemplary cop without a single black mark on his whole career.”

“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 did say half past twelve, Will. And I know I'm not mistaken this time,” as Hanken joined them.

Upman said, “I couldn't have done, darling. I'd always planned to clean the bike. So if you're ready for lunch this early—”

“It isn't early. And it'll be even less early by the time we get there. Damn it. If you didn't want to go, I just wish you'd have told me for once.”

“Joyce, did I say … did I even bloody hint that—” Upman caught sight of Hanken. “Inspector,” he said, rising and tossing the hose pipe to one side, where it burbled water in a gentle stream from the garage out onto the driveway “Joyce, this is Inspector Hanken, Buxton CID Could you deal with the tap for me, darling?”

Joyce sighed and saw to the water. She returned to the car and took up position in front of one of its headlamps. “Will,” she said. I've been patient as a saint, her tone implied.

Upman flashed a smile at her. “Work,” he said with a jerk of his head in Hanken's direction. “Will you give us a few minutes, Joy? Let's forget the lunch and have something here. We can drive over to Chatsworth afterwards. Have a walk. Do some talking.”

“I have to pick up the kids.”

“By six. I remember. And we'll manage it. No problem.” Again the smile. It was more intimate this time, the kind of smile that a man uses when he wishes to suggest to a woman that he and she speak a special language understood only by the two of them. It was mostly the language of bollocks, Hanken decided, but Joyce looked needy enough to accept the central theme such a language implied. “Could you make us some sandwiches, darling? While I'm finishing here? There's chicken in the fridge.” Upman didn't mention Han-ken's presence or the privacy that Joyce's removal to the kitchen would effect.

Joyce sighed again. “All right. This once. But I wish you'd start writing down the time when you want me to come over. With the kids, it's not exactly easy to—”

“Will do in future. Scout's honour.” He sent her an air kiss. “Sorry.”

She took it all in. “Sometimes I wonder why I bother,” she said with absolutely no conviction.

We all know the answer to that, Hanken thought.

When she'd taken herself off to prove herself in the housewife department, Upman went back to his mountain bike. He squatted and sprayed solvent lightly on the gear cluster and along the chain. The pleasant smell of lemons rose round them. He spun the left pedal backwards as he sprayed, running the chain through one revolution round the gears and, when it was soaked, he leaned back on his heels.

“I can't think we have anything more to talk about,” he said to Hanken. “I've told you what I know.”

“Right. And I've got what you know. I want to hear what you think this time round.”

Upman took up the plastic brush from the floor. “About what?” he asked.

“The Maiden girl moved house in London four months ago. She left law college round the same time, and she had no plans to return to her studies. She had, in fact, taken up an entirely new line of work. What do you know about that?”

“About the new line of work? Nothing, I'm afraid.”

“So why was she spending the summer doing the sort of job a law student takes in between terms for work experience? It wasn't going to get her anywhere, was it?”

“I don't know. I didn't ask her those questions.” Upman applied the brush to the bicycle chain, meticulous with his cleaning efforts.

“Did you know she'd left college?” Hanken asked. And when Upman nodded, he said, exasperated, “God's teeth, man. What's the matter with you? Why didn't you tell us when we spoke to you yesterday?”

Upman glanced his way. “You didn't ask outright,” he said dryly. And the implication was clear: A man in his right mind never gave answers to questions that the police didn't ask.

“All right. My mistake. I'm asking now. Did she tell you she'd left college? Did she tell you why? And when did she tell you?”

Upman scrutinised the bike chain as he worked upon it, one inch at a time. The grime that resulted from the marriage of off-road dust, dirt, and bicycle lubricant began to liquefy into soapy brown globs, some of which plopped to the floor beneath the bike. “She phoned me in April,” Upman said. “Her dad and I had arranged her summer job last year. In December, this was. I let her know then that I was selecting her on the strength of my friendship—well, acquaintance, really—with her father, and I asked her to let me know at once if something more to her taste came along, so I could offer the job to some other student. I'd meant more to her taste in law, but when she phoned in April, she told me she was giving up the practise of law entirely. She'd got another job that she liked better, she said. More money, less hours. Well, don't we all want that?”

“She didn't say what it was?”

“She named a firm in London. I don't remember what she called it. We didn't dwell much on the subject. Just spoke for a few minutes, mostly about the fact that she wouldn't be working for me in the summer.”

“But she ended up here anyway. Why? Did you talk her into it?”

“Not at all. She phoned again a few weeks later and said she'd changed her mind about the job and could she work for me as previously arranged if I hadn't got anyone yet.”

“She'd changed her mind about college?”

“No. She was still leaving college. I asked her that and she told me as much. But I don't think she was ready to tell her parents. They set a lot of store by her achievements. Well, what parent doesn't? And, after all, her dad had gone out of his way to arrange a job for her, and she knew that. The two of them were close, and I think she'd had second thoughts about letting him down when he was getting so much mileage from bragging about her. My daughter the lawyer. You know what I mean.”

“So why did you employ her? If she'd already left college, if she'd made it clear that she wouldn't be returning … She wasn't a law student any longer. Why hire her?”

“As I know her dad, I wasn't averse to going along with a little deception to spare his feelings, if only for the time being.”

“Why does that sound like pure cock to me, Upman? You had something going with the Maiden girl, didn't you? This summer-job rubbish was nothing but a blind. And you damn well know what she was up to in London.”

Upman withdrew the crescent end of the brush from the bicycle chain. It bled slick soapy residue onto the floor. He looked at Hanken. “I told you the truth yesterday, Inspector. All right, she was attractive. And she was intelligent. And the thought of having an attractive and intelligent young woman picking up the slack round the office from June till September didn't exactly set my teeth on edge. She would be a visual diversion, I thought. And I'm not a man who's distracted from his own work by a pleasant visual diversion. So when she wanted back in, I was happy to have her. As were my partners, by the way.”

“Have her, did you say?”

“Hell. Come on. We aren't playing at examine-the-hostile-witness. There's no point to your trying to trap me with slips, because I'm not hiding anything. You're wasting your time.”

“Where were you on the ninth of May?” Hanken persisted.

Upman's forehead furrowed. “The ninth? I'd have to check my diary, but I expect I had meetings with clients, as usual. Why?” He looked over at Hanken and appeared to take an accurate reading from the DFs face. “Ah. Someone must have gone to London to see Nicola. Is that right? To talk her into—perhaps even to force her into—a scintillating summer in Derbyshire taking depositions from housewives estranged from their husbands. Is that what you think?” He got to his feet and went for the hose pipe. He turned on the tap and brought the nozzle back. He directed a gentle spray at the bike chain, moving it along and watching the muck wash away.

“Perhaps that was you,” Hanken told him. “Perhaps you wanted to keep her from her ‘other employment.’ Perhaps you wanted to make sure you got the”—he felt his lip curl—“‘visual diversion’ you were looking for. Since she was so attractive and intelligent, as you say.”

“You'll have copies of my office diary on Monday morning” was Upman's even reply.

“Names and phone numbers appended, I hope?” “Whatever you'd like.” Upman nodded at the house, at the door through which the long-suffering Joyce had disappeared. “In case you hadn't noticed, I already have attractive and intelligent women in my life, Inspector. Believe me, I wouldn't have gone all the way to London to arrange for another. But if your thoughts are heading in that direction, you might want to consider who didn't have access to such a woman. And I think we both know who that poor sod is.”

Teddy Webster ignored his dad's bark of an order. Since it came from the direction of the kitchen, where his parents were still finishing up their lunch, he knew he had a good quarter of an hour before the order came a second time. And since his mum had made apple crumble as their sweet for once—a rare occurrence considering that her usual offering was a packet of fig newtons opened without ceremony and tossed into the centre of the table while she was clearing the plates away—that quarter of an hour might stretch to thirty minutes, in which case Teddy would have plenty of time to watch the rest of The Incredible Hulk before his father shouted “Turn off that damn telly and get yourself out of the house right now! I mean it, Teddy. I want you out in the fresh air. Now. Now! Before I make you sorry I've had to repeat myself.”

Saturdays were always like that: a boring, daft repetition of every other boring, daft Saturday since they'd moved to the Peaks. What always happened on Saturdays was this: Dad clumped round the house at half past seven, bellowing about how fine it was to be out of the city at last and weren't they all just bloody delighted to have fresh air to breathe and open spaces to explore and their country's history and culture and tradition jumping out at them from every stupid pile of rocks in every dumb field. Only these weren't fields, were they? These were moors and weren't they all lucky and blessed and … oh, just bloody special to live in a place where they could set off north just beyond their own house and walk for six billion miles without ever seeing a single soul? This wasn't a bit like Liverpool, was it, kids? This was heaven. This was Utopia. This was—A place that sucked, Teddy thought. And sometimes he said it, which set his father off and made his mother cry and sent his sister into one of her fits where she started whingeing about how was she ever going to go to drama school and become a real actress if she had to live in the middle of nowhere like some sort of leper?