In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (80 page)

“I thought you ought to know,” she'd concluded. “You have a right, since you were paying for law college. And I'll pay you back for that, by the way.” Again that smile, that sweet and infuriating Nicola smile which had always partnered whatever she announced as a fait accompli. I'm running away, she'd tell her parents when they'd refused an unreasonable request. I won't be here after school today. In fact, I'm not going to school at all. Don't expect me for dinner. Or for breakfast tomorrow. I'm running away. “I should have the money to pay you before the end of summer. I would have had it already, but we had to buy supplies and they cost quite a lot. Would you like to see them, by the way?”

He'd continued to believe it was some sort of joke. Even when she'd brought out her equipment and explained the use of each obscene item: the leather whips, the braces studded with small chrome nails, the masks and manacles, the shackles and collars. “You see, Dad, some people just can't get it off unless there's pain or humiliation involved,” she told her father as if he hadn't spent years exposed to just about every kind of human aberration. “They want the sex—well, that's natural, isn't it? I mean, don't we all want it?—but unless it's connected to something degrading or painful, they either don't get satisfaction from it or they can't even do it in the first place. And then there are others who seem to feel the need to atone for something. It's like they've committed a sin, and if they take their medicine like they're supposed to—six of the best to naughty little boys and all that—they're happy, they're forgiven, and they get on with their business. They go home to the wife and kiddies, and they feel, well, they feel … I suppose it sounds awfully odd to say it, but they seem to feel refreshed.” She appeared to read something on her father's face, then, that creased her own, because she reached across the table at which they sat and earnestly covered Andy's clenched fist with her hand. “Dad, I'm always the dom. You do know that, don't you? I wouldn't ever let someone do to me what I do to … Well, I'm just not interested. I do it because the money's fabulous, it's just beyond belief, and while I'm young and nice-looking and strong enough to do eight or nine sessions a day …” She smiled an impish smile, as she reached for the final object to show him. “The pony tail's the most ridiculous, actually. You can't imagine how silly a seventy-year-old bloke looks when he's got this thing hanging out of his … well, you know.”

“Say it,” he'd said to her, finding his voice at last.

She'd looked at him blankly, the black plastic plug with its black leather streamers dangling from her lovely slender hand. “What?”

“The word. Hanging from his what? If you can't say it, how can you do it?”

“Oh. That. Well, I only don't say it because you're my dad.”

And that admission had shattered something within him, some last vestige of control and an outdated restraint born of lifelong repression. “Arsehole,” he'd shouted. “It hangs from his God damn arse-hole, Nick,” and he swept from the dining table all the devices of torture that she'd assembled for him to see.

Nicola realised—finally—that she'd pushed him too far. She backed away from him as he let his rage, incomprehension, and despair take whatever form they chose. He upended furniture, broke crockery, and ripped her legal books from their bindings. He'd seen the fear in her, and he'd thought of the times that he could have inspired it in the past and had chosen not to. And that enraged him further until the roaring destruction he visited upon her bed-sit reduced his daughter to a cowering heap of the silk, suede, and linen that comprised her clothing. She huddled in the corner with her arms over her head, and that wasn't enough for him. He hurled her filthy equipment at her and bellowed, “I'll see you dead before I let you do it!”

It was only later, when he had time to think in the way that Nicola thought, that he realised there was another route to dissuading his daughter from her newly chosen vocation. There was the route of Will Upman and the possibility that he would do to her what he had the reputation for doing to so many other women. So he'd phoned her two days after his London visit and he'd offered her the deal. And Nicola, seeing that she could make more money in Derbyshire than in London, was willing to compromise.

He'd bought time, he thought. And they didn't discuss what had occurred between them that day in Islington.

For Nancy's sake, Andy had spent the summer trying to pretend that everything would work out well in the end. Should Nick return to the College of Law in the autumn, in fact, he'd have been willing to go to his death acting as if Islington had never happened at all.

“Don't tell your mother any of this,” he'd said to his daughter when they made their arrangements.

“But, Dad, Mummy—”

“No. God damn it, Nick, I'm not going to argue. I want your word to keep silent about all of this when you come home. Is that perfectly clear? Because if one whisper reaches your mother, you'll not have a penny from me, and I mean it. So give me your word.”

She did. And if there was any saving grace in the ugliness of Nick's life and the horror of her death, it was that Nancy had been spared the knowledge of what that life had become.

But now that knowledge threatened to bring further destruction into Andy's world. He'd lost his daughter to degradation and defilement. He wasn't about to lose his wife to the anguish and grief of learning about it.

He saw that there was only one way to stop the wheel of Nicola's death in the midst of its cycle of destruction. He knew he had the means to stop it. He could only pray that at the last moment he would also have the will.

What did it matter that yet another life would pay the forfeit? Men had died for less if the cause was good. So had women.

By Monday midmorning Barbara Havers had increased her knowledge of archery by several degrees. In the future, she'd be able to discuss with the best of them the merits of Mylar instead of feathers for fletchings or the differences among long, compound, and recurve bows. But as to getting any closer to pinning the William Tell award on Matthew King-Ryder's jacket … she'd not had a breath of luck in that.

She'd been through Jason Harley's mailing list. She'd even tracked down by telephone every name from the Ust with a London address, to see if King-Ryder was using a pseudonym. But after three hours she was nowhere with the list, and the catalogue—while improving her backlog of trivia for those moments at la-dee-dah drinks parties when one racked one's brain for something to add to the conversation—had gained her nothing. So when her phone rang and it was Helen Lynley on the line, asking if she could come round to Belgravia, Barbara was happy to comply. Helen was nothing if not scrupulous about her mealtimes, and it was drawing towards lunch with nothing in the fridge but more reheatables in the rogan josh line. Barbara knew she could do with a change.

She arrived at Eaton Terrace within the hour. Helen herself answered the door. She was, as usual, perfectly turned out in neat tan trousers and a forest-green shirt. Seeing her, Barbara felt like a lump of mouldy cheese on the doorstep. Since she'd called in ill to the Yard, she'd dressed with even less care than was her norm. She wore an oversize grey T-shirt over black leggings and she was sockless in her red high-top trainers.

“Don't mind me. I'm traveling incognito,” she said to Lynley's wife.

Helen smiled. “Thanks for coming so quickly. I would have come to you, but I thought you might want to be in this part of town when we've finished.”

Finished? Barbara thought. Wonderful news. Then lunch was in the offing.

Helen beckoned Barbara inside, calling out, “Charlie? Barbara is here. Have you had lunch, Barbara?”

“Well. No,” Barbara said, and she added,“I mean not exactly,” because brutal honesty strong-armed her into admitting that having toast with Chicken Tonight creamy garlic sauce on it for her elevenses might be considered an early lunch in some quarters.

“I've got to go out—Pen's coming up from Cambridge sans children this afternoon and we've promised ourselves a meal in Chelsea—but Charlie can do you a sandwich or a salad if you're feeling light-headed.”

“I'll survive,” Barbara told her, although even to herself she sounded doubtful.

She followed Helen into the house's well-appointed drawing room, where she saw that the breakfront cabinet which housed Lynley's stereo system was standing open. All of its various components were lit, and a CD's jacket lay splayed on the tuner. Helen beckoned Barbara to sit, and she took the same place she'd taken on the previous afternoon before Lynley had thrown her off the case.

She said, “I take it the inspector made it back to Derbyshire in one piece?” as a conversational opener.

Helen said, “I'm awfully sorry about the row between you two. Tommy is … well, Tommy's just Tommy.”

“That's one way of putting it,” Barbara admitted.

“We have something we'd like you to listen to,” Helen said.

“You and the inspector?”

“Tommy? No. He knows nothing about this.” Helen seemed to read something on Barbara's face, because she hastened to add rather obscurely, “It's just that we weren't certain how best to interpret what we had. So I said, ‘Let's phone Barbara, shall we?’”

“We,” Barbara said.

“Charlie and I. Ah. Here he is. Play it for Barbara, will you please, Charlie?”

Denton greeted Barbara and passed to her what he carried into the room: a tray on which sat a plate displaying a succulent-looking breast of chicken nestled in an arrangement of tri-coloured pasta. A glass of white wine and a roll accompanied this. A linen napkin cocooned cutlery in an artistic fashion. “Thought you might be able to do with a bite,” he told her. “I hope you like basil.”

“I consider it the answer to a young girl's prayer.”

Denton grinned. Barbara tucked in as he went to the cabinet. Helen joined Barbara on the sofa as Denton fiddled with buttons and dials, saying, “Have a listen to this.”

Barbara did so, munching Denton's excellent chicken and, as an orchestra began something heavy on the woodwinds, she thought that there were certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon.

A baritone began singing. Barbara caught some, but not all, of the words:

… to live, to live, to live onward or die

the question lingers in the mind till mankind questions why

to die, to die, to end the aching heart

to nevermore be shocked and scored as flesh accepts its part

in what it is to be a man, vows made in haste, afraid

why not take death into my breast, eternal sleep within my grave

to sleep, that sleep, the terrors waiting there

what dreams may come to men asleep who think without a care

that they've escaped the whips, the scorns that time brings those who live

That sleep allows a peace to grow within a man who can't forgive …

“It's nice,” Barbara said to Denton and Helen. “It's terrific, in fact. I've never heard it.”

“Here's why.” Helen handed over the very same manila envelope that Barbara herself had brought to Eaton Terrace.

When she slid the stack of papers out, Barbara saw that they were the hand-scored music Mrs. Baden had given her. She said, “I don't get it.”

“Look.” Helen directed Barbara's attention to the first of the sheets. In very short order, Barbara found herself following along with what the baritone was singing. She read the song's title at the top of the page, “What Dreams May Come,” and she took in the fact that the song had been written in his own hand with his very own signature scrawled across the top: Michael Chandler.

Her first reaction was a plummeting of her spirits. She said, “Damn,” as her theory of the motive behind the Derbyshire murders was shot straight to hell. “So the music's already been produced. That puts a serious screw in my thinking.” For there was certainly no point in Matthew King-Ryder's rubbing out Terry Cole and Nicola Maiden—not to mention beating up Vi Nevin—if the music he was purportedly after had already been produced. He couldn't mount a brand-new production with old music. He could only mount a revival. And that was nothing worth killing over, since the profits of a revival of anything by Chandler and King-Ryder would be governed by the terms of his father's will.

She started to flip the music onto the coffee table, but Helen laid a hand on her arm. “Wait,” she said. “I don't think you understand. Charlie? Show her.”

Denton handed over two items: One was the jacket of the CD that was playing; the other was a souvenir theatre programme of the type that generally set one back rather considerably in the lolly department. Hamlet was emblazoned on both the CD and the programme. And on the CD were the additional words: Lyrics and Music by David King-Ryder. Barbara stared at this latter announcement for a number of seconds as she came to terms with everything it meant.

And its meaning boiled down to a single lovely fact: She finally had Matthew King-Ryder's actual motive for murder.

Hanken was adamant. He wanted the Black Angel Hotels records and he wasn't going to be pleasant to be around until he got them. Lynley could accompany him on the expedition or he could tackle Brough-ton Manor by himself, which Hanken didn't advise, since he'd done nothing to get a warrant to search Broughton Manor and he didn't think the Brittons would take to their collective bosom anyone sifting through the muck and dross of a few hundred years of their family history.

“It's going to take a team of twenty to go through that place,” Hanken said. “If we have to, we'll do it. But I'll put money on the square that says we won't have to.”

They had the hotel records in their possession in extremely short order. While Lynley phoned London to track down Nkata for a fax of Havers' SO 10 findings, Hanken took the hotel's registration cards through to the bar, where pork with baked apples was on offer for lunch. When Lynley joined him with the fax of Havers' report, the other DI was dipping into the day's speciality with one hand and going through the registration cards with the other. A second plate—steaming with a similar meal—was set opposite him, a pint of lager next to it.