In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (15 page)

Hanken offered the woman his police identification and introduced Lynley. The woman said, “You'll be wanting to speak to the Maidens. I'll fetch them,” and she ducked past the officers, hurried through the reception area, and began climbing the stairs.

Lynley walked to one of the lounge's two alcoves, where late afternoon light was filtering through lead-paned windows. These overlooked the drive that curved round the front of the house. Beyond it, a lawn had been reduced to a heat-baked mat of twisted blades in the previous months’ drought. Behind him, he could hear Hanken moving restlessly round the room. A few magazines shifted position and slapped down onto table tops. Lynley smiled at the sound. His fellow DI was doubtless giving in to his restless need to put things in order.

It was absolutely quiet inside the hunting lodge. The windows were open, so the sound of birds and a distant plane broke the stillness. But inside, it was as hushed as an empty church.

A door closed somewhere and footsteps crunched across gravel. A moment later, a dark-haired man in jeans and a sleeveless grey sweatshirt pedaled past the windows on a ten-speed bicycle. He disappeared into the trees as the Maiden Hall drive began to descend the hill.

The Maidens joined them then. Lynley turned from the window at the sound of their entrance and Hanken's formal “Mr. and Mrs. Maiden. Please accept our sympathies.”

Lynley saw that the years of his retirement had dealt with Andy Maiden kindly. The former SO 10 officer and his wife were both in their early sixties, but they looked at least a decade younger. Andy had developed the appearance of an outdoorsman: a tanned face, a flat stomach, a brawny chest, all of which seemed suited to a man who'd left behind a reputation for disappearing chameleon-like into his environment. His wife matched him in physical condition. She, too, was tanned and solid, as if she took frequent exercise. Both of them looked as if they'd missed more than one night's sleep though. Andy Maiden was unshaven, in rumpled clothing. Nan was haggard, beneath her eyes a puckering of skin that was purplish in hue.

Maiden managed a grateful half-smile. “Tommy. Thank you for coming.”

Lynley said, “I'm sorry it has to be under these circumstances,” and introduced himself to Maiden's wife. He said, “Everyone at the Yard sends condolences, Andy.”

“Scotland Yard?” Nan Maiden sounded dazed. Her husband said, “In a moment, love.” He made a gesture with his arm, indicating the alcove behind Lynley, where two sofas faced each other across a coffee table that was spread with copies of Country Life. He and his wife took one of the sofas, Lynley the other. Hanken swiveled an armchair round and positioned himself just a few inches away from the central point between the Maidens and Lynley. The action suggested that he would play a mediating influence between the parties. But Lynley noted that the DI was careful to place his chair several inches closer to Scotland Yard of the present than to Scotland Yard of the past.

If Andy Maiden was aware of Hanken's manoeuvre and what it implied, he gave no sign. Instead, he sat forward on the sofa with his hands balanced between his legs. Left hand massaged right. Right massaged left.

His wife observed him doing this. She passed him a small red ball that she took from her pocket, saying, “Is it still bad? Shall I phone the doctor for you?”

“You're ill?” Lynley asked.

Maiden squeezed the ball with his right hand and gazed at the spread fingers of his left. “Circulation,” he said. “It's nothing.”

“Please let me phone the doctor, Andy,” his wife said.

“That's not what's important.”

“How can you say—” Nan Maiden's eyes grew suddenly bright. “God. Did I forget even for a moment?” She leaned her forehead against her husband's shoulder and began to cry. Roughly, Maiden put his arm round her.

Lynley cast a look at Hanken. You or I? he asked silently. It's not going to be pleasant.

Hanken's reply was a sharp nod. It's yours, the nod said.

“There isn't going to be an easy time to talk about your daughter's death,” Lynley began gently. “But in a murder investigation—and I know that you're already aware of this, Andy—the first hours are critical.”

As he spoke, Nan Maiden raised her head. She tried to speak, failed, then tried again.

“Murder investigation,” she repeated. “What are you saying?”

Lynley looked from husband to wife. Hanken did likewise. Then they looked at each other. Lynley said to Andy, “You've seen the body, haven't you? You've been told what happened?”

“Yes,” Maiden said. “I've been told. But I—” “Murder?” His wife cried out in horror. “Oh my God, Andy. You never said Nicola was murdered!”

Barbara Havers had spent the afternoon in Greenford, making the decision to use the rest of her sick day to visit her mother in Hawthorn Lodge, an overnamed postwar semi-detached where Mrs. Havers had lived as a permanent resident for the last ten months. In the way of most people who attempt to gain support from others for a position that might be untenable, Barbara had found that there was a price to pay for successfully cultivating advocates among Inspector Lynley's friends and relatives. And because she didn't want to face any more price-paying in one afternoon, she sought a distraction.

Mrs. Havers was nothing if not adept at providing escape hatches from reality, since she herself no longer lived in that realm on a regular basis. Barbara had found her in the back garden of Hawthorn Lodge, where she was engaged in putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle's box top had been propped up against an old mayonnaise jar that was filled with coloured sand holding seven plastic carnations in position. On this box top, a smarmy cartoon prince—perfectly proportioned and demonstrating a sufficient amount of adoration for the occasion—was slipping a high-heeled glass shoe onto the slender and curiously toeless foot of Cinderella while the girl's two cowlike and resentful stepsisters watched jealously to one side, culling a richly deserved comeuppance.

With the tender encouragement of her nurse and keeper Mrs. Flo—as Florence Magentry was called by her three elderly residents and their families—Mrs. Havers had managed successfully to assemble Cinderella, part of the stepsisters, the prince's shoe-wielding arm, his manly torso, and his bent left leg. However as Barbara joined her, she was in the midst of attempting to pound the prince's face onto one of the stepsisters’ shoulders and when Mrs. Flo gently guided her hand towards the proper placement of the piece, Mrs. Havers shouted, “No, no, no!” and pushed the whole puzzle away, knocking over the jar, scattering its plastic carnations, and spilling sand across the table.

Barbara's intervention didn't help matters. Whether her mother recognised her during visits was always a matter of chance, and on this day Mrs. Havers’ clouded consciousness attached Barbara's face to someone called Libby O'Rourke, who apparently had been the school temptress during Mrs. Havers’ childhood. It seemed that Libby O'Rourke had operated in a female version of Georgie Porgie mode most of the time, and one of the boys whom she'd kissed was none other than Mrs. Havers’ own beau, an act of effrontery that Mrs. Havers felt compelled to avenge on this very day by throwing puzzle pieces, shouting invective coloured by the sort of language Barbara wouldn't have thought part of her mother's vocabulary, and ultimately crumpling into a weeping heap. It was a situation that had taken some handling: persuading her mother to leave the garden, urging her upstairs to her room, coaxing her to look through a family album long enough to see that Barbara's round and snubby face appeared on its pages far too often for her to be the loathsome Libby.

“But I don't have a little girl,” Mrs. Havers protested in a voice more frightened than confused when she'd been forced to agree that Libby O'Rourke's being given a position of prominence in the family album made no sense, considering the offence she had once given. “Mummy won't let me have babies. I c'n only have dolls.”

Barbara had no answer for that. Her mother's mind made the tortuous journey into the past too often and with so little warning that she'd long ago forgiven herself her inability to deal with it with any expertise. So, after the album was set aside, she hadn't made any further attempts to argue, persuade, dissuade, or appeal. She'd merely selected one of the travel magazines that her mother loved to thumb through and she'd spent ninety minutes sitting shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the bed with the woman who'd forgotten she'd ever given birth, looking at photographs of Thailand, Australia, and Greece.

That was when her conscience finally gained some dominance over her resistance, and the internal voice that had earlier decried Lyn-ley's actions was confronted by a voice that suggested her own actions might have been wanting. What ensued was a nonverbal argument taking place in her head. One side insisted that Inspector Lynley was a vindictive prig. The other informed her that—prig or not—he didn't deserve her disloyalty. And she had been disloyal. Trotting round to Chelsea in order to denounce him to his intimates was not the behaviour of a steadfast friend. On the other hand, he'd been disloyal as well. Taking it upon himself to amplify her formal punishment by overlooking her on a case, he'd more than illustrated whose side he was on in her battle to save her professional hide, no matter what he claimed about her need to keep a low profile for a while.

Such was the argument that raged within her. It began as she leafed through the travel magazines and murmured comments about fantasy holidays her mother had taken to Crete, Mykonos, Bangkok, and Perth. It continued unabated on her drive from Greenford back into London at the end of the day. Not even an ancient Fleetwood Mac tape playing at maximum volume could subdue the disputing parties inside Barbara's head. Because throughout the drive, singing harmony with Stevie Nicks was the mezzo soprano of Barbara's conscience, a sententious cantata that stubbornly refused to be excised from her brain.

He deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it! she silently screamed at the voice.

And where did giving him what he deserved get you, my darling? her conscience replied.

She was still refusing to answer that question when she pulled into Steeles Road and slid the Mini into a parking space that was being conveniently vacated by a woman, three children, two dogs, and what appeared to be a cello with legs. She locked up and trudged in the direction of Eton Villas, gratified that she was feeling tired, because tired meant sleep and sleep meant putting an end to the voices.

She heard other voices, however, as she rounded the corner and came upon the yellow Edwardian house behind which sat her mouse-hole dwelling. These new voices were coming from the flagstone area in front of the ground floor flat. And one of these voices—belonging to a child—cried out happily when Barbara came through the gate of bright orange pickets.

“Barbara! Hullo, hullo! Dad and I are blowing bubbles. Come and see. When the light hits them just exactly right, they look like round rainbows. Did you know that, Barbara? Come and see, come and see.”

The little girl and her father were seated on the solitary wooden bench in front of their flat, she in the fast-fading light, he in the growing shadows where his cigarette glowed like a crimson firefly. He touched his daughter's head fondly and rose in the formal fashion that was his by nature. “You'll join us?” Taymullah Azhar asked Barbara.

“Oh do, do, do,” the child exclaimed. “After the bubbles, we're watching a video. The Little Mermaid. And we've got toffee apples for a treat. Well, we've only got two, but I'll share mine with you. One's too much for me to eat anyway.” She scooted off the bench and came to greet Barbara, dancing across the lawn with the bubble wand and creating a trail of round rainbows behind her.

“The Little Mermaid, is it?” Barbara said thoughtfully. “I don't know, Hadiyyah. I've never thought of myself as a Disney sort of bird. All those skinny Sloane-types being rescued by blokes in suits of armour—”

“This is a mermaid,” Hadiyyah interrupted instructively.

“Hence the title. Yeah. Right.”

“So she can't be rescued by someone in armour 'cause he'd sink to the bottom of the sea. And anyways, no one saves her at all. She saves the prince.”

“Now, there's a twist I might be able to live with.”

“You've never seen it, have you? Well, tonight you can. Do come.” Hadiyyah whirled round in a circle, surrounding herself with a hoop of bubbles. Her long, thick plaits flew about her shoulders, the silver ribbons that tied them glittering like pale dragonflies. “The little mermaid's prettier'n anything. She has auburn hair.”

“A good contrast to her scales.”

“And she wears the sweetest little shells on her chest.” Hadiyyah demonstrated with two small, dark hands cupped over two non-existent breasts.

“Ah. Strategically placed, I see,” Barbara said.

“Won't you watch it with us? Please? Like I said, we've got toffee ap-ples …” Coaxingly, she drew out the last two words.

“Hadiyyah,” her father said quietly, “an invitation once extended needn't be repeated.” And to Barbara, “Nonetheless, we'd be most happy to have you join us.”

Barbara considered the proposition. An evening with Hadiyyah and her father offered the potential for more distraction, and she liked the thought of that very much. She could sit with her little friend, comfortably lounging on enormous floor pillows, their heads in their palms and their feet in the air, swaying side by side as they kept time to the music. She could chat to her little friend's father afterwards, when Hadiyyah herself had been sent off to bed. Taymullah Azhar would expect that much. It was a habit they'd developed during the months of Barbara's enforced leave from Scotland Yard. And in the past few weeks especially, their dialogue had moved from the banalities of relative strangers being polite to the initial delicate conversational probing of two individuals who might become friends.

But in that friendship lay the rub of the matter. It called for Barbara to reveal her encounters with Hillier and Lynley. It required the truth of her demotion and her estrangement from the man she'd sought to emulate. And because Azhar's own eight-year-old daughter was the child whose life had been saved by Barbara's impetuous actions on the North Sea—actions that she'd managed to keep from Azhar in the three months since the chase had occurred—he would feel a responsibility for the fallout to her career that wasn't his to bear.