Trying to pin down the individual whom Terry Cole had gone to see at King-Ryder Productions hadn't been as easy as Barbara Havers anticipated after her conversation with Neil Sitwell, even with the list of employees in her possession. Not only were there three dozen of them listed, but on a Saturday night most of those three dozen had not been at home. They were, after all, theatre people. And theatre people-so she discovered-were not in the habit of vegetating blissfully under their own roofs when they could be out on the town. So it had been after two in the morning before she'd tracked down Terry Coles contact at 31-32 Soho Square: Matthew King-Ryder, son of the deceased founder of the theatrical production company.
He'd agreed to see her-”after nine, if you don't mind. I'm completely fagged out”-at his home in Baker Street.
It was half past nine when Barbara found the address that had been listed along with Matthew King-Ryder's name and phone number. It was a mansion block, she saw, one of those enormous brick Victorian structures that-at the end of the nineteenth century-had signaled an alteration in lifestyle from the spacious and gracious to the more understated and the somewhat confined.
Relatively speaking, of course. Compared to Barbara's hovel, King-Ryder's flat was a virtual palace, although it did appear to be one of those ill-thought-out conversions of a larger flat in which cross-ventilation and natural lighting had been sacrificed to the cause of lining someone's pockets with monthly rental payments.
Or such was Barbara's assessment of the flat when Matthew King-Ryder admitted her to it. He asked her to “excuse the mess, please. I'm getting ready to move house,” in reference to a pile of rubbish and bin bags waiting for the mansion block's cleaners outside his front door, and he led her down a short and badly lit corridor to a sitting room. There, gaping cardboard boxes displayed books, trophies, and various ornaments indifferently wrapped in newspaper, and framed photographs and theatrical posters leaned in stacks against the walls, waiting for a similar disposition. “I'm finally entering the world of property ownership,” King-Ryder confided. “I've got enough for the house, but not enough for the house and the removal men. So it's a bit of a do-it-myself job. Hence the mess. Sorry. Here. Have a seat.” He swept a stack of theatre programmes to the floor. “Would you like a coffee? I was just about to make some for myself.”
“Sure,” Barbara said.
He went to the kitchen which lay just beyond a dining nook. A hatch had been crafted into one of the walls, and he spoke through this casually as he dumped a measure of coffee beans into a grinder. “I'll be south of the river, which won't be as convenient for getting to the West End. But it's a house, not a flat. And it has a decent garden and, more important, it's freehold. And it's mine.” He canted his head and grinned in her direction. “Sorry. I'm rather excited. Thirty-three and I've finally got a mortgage. Who knows? It'll probably be marriage next. I like it strong. The coffee, that is. 'S that okay with you?”
Strong was fine by her, Barbara told him. The more caffeine the better, as far as she was concerned. Idly, she flipped through one of the stacks of framed photos near to her chair as she waited. Most of them depicted the same familiar individual posing through the years alongside a score of even more familiar theatrical faces.
“This your dad?” Barbara called out conversationally-albeit unnecessarily-over the gravely roar of the coffee grinder.
King-Ryder glanced through the hatch and saw what she was doing. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah. That's my dad.”
The two men looked very little alike. Matthew had been blessed with all the physical advantages that nature had denied his father. While father had been short and froglike of face with the exophthalmic eyes of a thyroid patient, the jowls of a ban viveur, and the facial warts of a fairy-tale villain, son had been blessed with greater stature, with an aristocratic nose, and with the sort of skin, eyes, and mouth that women would pay plastic surgeons handsomely to possess.
“You didn't look much alike,” Barbara said. “You and your dad.”
From the kitchen Matthew shot her a regretful smile. “No. He wasn't much to look at, was he? And he knew it, unfortunately. Took a lot of bullying when he was a boy. I think that's why he kept going after new women through the years: to prove something to himself.”
“Too bad about his death. I was sorry to hear… well, you know.” Barbara felt uncomfortable. What did one say about a suicide, after all?
Matthew nodded but made no reply. He went back to his coffee making, and Barbara went back to the pictures. She saw that only one of them featured father and son together: an ancient school photo in which a small Matthew stood with a trophy in his hand and an enraptured smile like a blaze on his face while his father held a rolled-up programme of some kind and frowned with an inner preoccupation. Matthew was proudly clad in athletics kit, a leather strap diagonally bisecting his torso in the fashion of a soldier from World War I. David was clad in his own version of uniform, a business suit that spoke of a score of important meetings he was missing.
“He doesn't look too happy in this shot,” Barbara noted, removing the picture from the stack and studying it.
“Oh. That. Sports day at school. Dad really hated it. He was about as athletic as an ox. But Mum was good at pushing the guilt buttons when she could get him on the phone, so he generally showed up. But he didn't much like it. And he was good at letting one know when he didn't much like doing what he was doing. Typical artist, he was.”
“That must have hurt.”
“Not really. They were divorced by then-my parents-so my sister and I took what we could get of his time.”
“Where is she now?”
“Isadora? She does costume design. For the RSC mostly.”
“You've both followed in his footsteps, then.”
“Isadora more than me. Like Dad, she's on the creative end. I'm just a numbers cruncher.” He returned to the sitting room, bearing an old tin tray on which he'd placed mugs of coffee, a jug of milk, and some sugar cubes on a saucer. He balanced this on top of a stack of magazines that sat on an ottoman and went on to explain that he had been his late father's business manager and agent. He negotiated contracts, tracked royalty money from the numerous productions of his father's work all round the globe, sold rights to future productions of the plays, and kept his fingers on the pulse of expenditures when the company mounted a new pop opera in London.
“So your work doesn't end with your father's death.”
“No. Because his work-the music itself, that is-doesn't actually end, does it? As long as his operas are being mounted somewhere, my work will continue. Eventually, we'll reduce the staff at the production company, but someone will have to keep tabs on all the rights. And there'll always be the fund to look after as well.”
“The fund?”
Matthew plunked three sugar cubes into his mug and stirred it with a ceramic-handled spoon. His father, he explained, had established a foundation some years ago to fund creative artists. The money was used to send actors and musicians to school, to back new productions, to launch new plays by unknown playwrights, to support lyricists and composers who were just starting their careers. With David King-Ryder's death, all monies accrued from his work would go into that fund. Aside from a bequest to his fifth and final wife, the David King-Ryder Fund was the sole beneficiary of King-Ryder's will.
“I didn't know that,” Barbara said, impressed. “Generous bloke. Nice of him to give others a leg-up.”
“He was a decent man, my dad. He wasn't that much of a father when my sister and I were young, and he didn't believe in handouts or in coddling anyone. But he supported talent wherever he found it if the artist was willing to work. And that's a brilliant legacy, if you ask me.”
“Too bad, what happened. I mean… you know.”
“Thanks. It was… I still don't understand it.” Matthew examined the rim of his coffee mug. “What was so bloody strange was that he had a hit after all those rotten years. The audience went wild before the curtain call began, and he was there. He saw it. Even the critics were on their feet. So the reviews were going to be like a miracle. He had to have known.”
Barbara knew the story. Opening night of Hamlet. A brilliant success after years of failure. No note left behind to explain his actions, the composer/lyricist offed himself with a single shot to the head while his wife was having a bath in the very next room.
“You were close to your dad,” Barbara noted, seeing the grief still evident in Matthew King-Ryder's expression.
“Not as a child or an adolescent. But in the final years I was. Yes. I was. But obviously, not close enough.” Matthew blinked and took a gulp of his coffee. “Right, then. Enough. You've come on business. You said you wanted to see me about Terence… That boy in black who came to see me in Soho.”
“Yes. Terence Cole.” Barbara gave Matthew the facts in anticipation of his verifying them. “Neil Sitwell-he's the head muckety over at Bowers in Cork Street-said he sent him to you with a piece of handwritten music by Michael Chandler that he'd come across. He figured you'd know how Terry could contact the solicitors for the Chandler estate.”
Matthew frowned. “He did? That's extraordinary.”
“You wouldn't know how to contact those solicitors?” Barbara asked. That hardly seemed credible.
Matthew hastened to correct her. “Obviously, I know the Chandler solicitors. I know the Chandlers themselves, if it comes down to it. Michael had four children and they're all still in London. As is his widow. But the boy didn't mention Bowers when he came to see me. He didn't mention a Neil Sitwell either. And most important, he didn't mention any music.”
“He didn't? Then why did he ask to see you?”
“He said he'd heard about the Fund. Well, he would have done, wouldn't he, since it got a lot of press when Dad died. Cole hoped for patronage. He brought me some photos of his work.”
Barbara felt as if cobwebs were filling her skull, so unprepared had she been for this information. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I'm sure. He had a portfolio with him and I thought at first he was hoping for financial support while he studied to be a set or costume designer. Because, like I said, those are the people the Fund supports: artists who're connected with the theatre in one way or another. Not artists in general. But he didn't know this. Or he misunderstood. Or he'd misread the details somewhere… I don't know.”
“Did he show you what he had in the portfolio?”
“Pictures of his work, most of it pretty awful. Gardening tools bent this way and that. I don't know much about modern art, but from what I could see, I'd say he needed to think about another profession.”
Barbara mused. When, she asked, had the visit from Terry Cole occurred?
Matthew thought for a moment and left the room to fetch his diary, which he carried back to the sitting room, open upon his palm. He hadn't recorded the visit since the Cole boy hadn't phoned for an appointment in advance. But it had been a day when Ginny-his father's widow-had been in the office and he had made note of that. Matthew gave Barbara the date. It was the very day of Terry Cole's death.
“Of course, I didn't tell him what I actually thought of his work. There would have been no point in that. And besides, he seemed so earnest about it.”
“Cole never mentioned music? A piece of sheet music? Or Michael Chandler? Or even your dad?”
“Not at all. Of course, he knew who my father was. He did say that. But that could have been merely because he was hoping to get some money off the Fund. Oiling his way with the odd compliment or two, if you know what I mean. But that was it.” Matthew sat down again, closed his diary, and took up his mug. “Sorry. I haven't helped much, have I?”
“I don't know,” Barbara replied thoughtfully.
“May I ask why you're collecting information on the boy? Has he done something…? I mean, you are the police.”
“Something's been done to him. He was murdered the same day he saw you.”
“The same…? God. That's nasty. You're on the trail of his killer?”
Barbara wondered about that. It had certainly felt like a trail. It had looked like, smelled like, and acted like a trail. But for the first time since Inspector Lynley had directed her back to the Criminal Record Information System with the order to explore Andrew Maiden's past cases for a potential connection to his daughter's death, and for the first time since she'd rejected that line of enquiry as useless to the case, she was forced to wonder if she was following a fox or a herring, cured and dyed. She couldn't have said.
So she dug her car keys out of her bag and told Matthew King-Ryder she would be in touch if she had further questions. And if he should happen to recall anything more from his time with Terry Cole… She handed over her number. Would he phone? she asked him.
Certainly, Matthew King-Ryder told her. And in case Terry Cole had unearthed the name of the Chandler solicitors without the aid of King-Ryder, he wanted the police to have the name of the firm and their telephone number. He flipped to the back of his diary, accessed a directory, and ran his finger down a page of names and numbers. Finding the one he wanted, he recited the information. Barbara took it down. She thanked the young man for his cooperation and wished him luck in his move south of the river. He saw her to the door. In the manner of all wise Londoners, he bolted it behind her.
Alone in the corridor outside his flat, Barbara considered what she'd heard, and she pondered how-and if-the information she was gathering fitted into the puzzle of Terry Coles death. Terry had talked about his big commission, she recalled. Could he have been speaking about his hopes for a grant from the King-Ryder Fund? She'd leapt to the conclusion that his visit to King-Ryder must have had to do with the Michael Chandler music in his possession. But if he'd been informed that the music was worthless to him, why would he have gone to the trouble of tracking down solicitors and turning the music over to Chandler's family? Certainly, he might have hoped for a reward from the Chandlers. But even if he'd been given one, could it possibly have matched an artistic grant from King-Ryder which would have allowed him to pursue his questionable career in sculpting? Hardly, Barbara decided. Far better to make an attempt to impress an established benefactor with his talent than to hope for the generosity of unknown people grateful to have their own property returned.
Yes. There was sense in this. And chances were that Terry Cole had shrugged off every consideration of making money from Chandler's handwritten score once he knew how necessary were the kindness and generosity of strangers to the successful fulfillment of his ambition. After speaking to Sitwell, he'd probably chucked the music out or taken it home and left it somewhere among his things. Which, of course, begged the question of why she and Nkata hadn't come across it when they'd searched the flat. But would they even have noticed a sheet of music among his gear? Especially when one considered the bombardment their senses had taken with the art of both the occupants of the flat.
Art. There was a point of connection for all the details in the case, she thought. Art. Artists. The King-Ryder Fund. Matthew had said that grants were given only to artists connected with the theatre. But what was to prevent an artist switching to the theatre just to cut in on some money? If Terry Cole had twigged to this idea, if he'd actually presented himself as a designer and not a sculptor, if indeed his big commission was in reality a fraud perpetrated against a fund that was intended as a lasting memorial to a giant of the theatre…
No. She was getting ahead of herself. She was mixing too many possibilities into the brew. She was going to give herself a headache, and she was going to turn cloudy water to mud. She needed to think, to get out in the air, to have a brisk walk in Regent's Park so she could sort out everything that was piling up in-Barbara's thoughts stopped their tumble as her gaze settled on the collection of rubbish outside King-Ryder's door. She hadn't given it any notice on the way in, but now she did. They'd talked about artists, about not knowing much about modern art. And what she saw outside King-Ryder's door intruded upon her notice because they'd had that conversation.
A canvas was among the rubbish that King-Ryder was discarding. It leaned with its face against the wall, rubbish bags piled up against it.
Barbara looked left and right. She made the decision to see what went for art-discarded or otherwise-to Matthew King-Ryder. She eased the rubbish bags away from the canvas and eased the canvas away from the wall.
“Bloody hell,” she whispered when she saw what she'd uncovered: a grotesque blonde woman, her huge mouth gaping open to display a cat defecating on her tongue.
Barbara had seen a dozen or more variations on this questionable theme already. She'd seen and talked to the artist as well: Cilia Thompson, who'd announced proudly that she'd sold a painting “to a gent with good taste only last week.”
Barbara examined the closed door to Matthew King-Ryder's digs. A chill ran through her. A killer lived within, she decided. And she determined then and there that she was just the rozzer who would bring him to justice.
Lynley found Barbara Havers’ report on his desk when he arrived at the Yard at ten o'clock that morning. He read the summaries and conclusions she'd developed regarding the files she'd explored on CRIS, and he took note of the implication of grievance which coloured her choice of words. At the moment, though, he couldn't afford to give weight to her thinly veiled criticism of the orders he'd given her. The morning had already been a wrenching one, and he had other more pressing matters on his mind than a DCs unhappiness with her assignment.
He'd taken a detour from his normal route from Eaton Terrace to Victoria Street, dropping down to Fulham, where he checked on Vi Nevin's condition at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The young woman's doctors had granted him quarter of an hour with her. But she'd been deeply sedated and during that time she hadn't stirred. A plastic surgeon had arrived to examine her, which necessitated the removal of her bandages, and she slept through this activity as well.
In the midst of the surgeon's attention to her friend, Shelly Platt arrived at the hospital in a linen trouser suit and sandals, her orange hair hidden beneath a wide-brimmed raffia hat and her eyes concealed by a pair of sunglasses. With the excuse of offering sympathy upon the death of Nicola Maiden, she'd been phoning Vi repeatedly since Lynley's visit to her Earl's Court bed-sit. Unable to raise her, she'd finally gone to Rostrevor Road, where the attack on her old flatmate was the talk of the neighbourhood.
“I got t'see her!” was what Lynley heard from within as the plastic surgeon studied the ruin of Vi's face and talked quietly about bones shattered like glass, skin grafts, and scar tissue with the disinterested air of a man more suited to medical research than to the treatment of patients. Recognising the glottal stops if not the voice itself coming from the corridor, Lynley excused himself and went out to find Shelly Platt trying to elbow past the police guard and a nurse from the floor.
“He did it, di'n't he?” Shelly Platt cried when she saw him. “I tol’ him and he found her, di'n't he? He did. And he got her just like I thought he would. And now he'll come for me if he knows I tol’ you the truth about his business. How is she? How's Vi?? Lemme see her. I got to.”
Her voice rose towards hysteria, and the nurse asked if “this creature” was a relative of the patient. Shelly took off her sunglasses, exposing bloodshot eyes that she rolled towards Lynley in mute appeal.
“She's her sister,” Lynley informed the nurse, guiding Shelly by the arm. “She's allowed inside.”
Within, Shelly threw herself at the bed, where another nurse was replacing Vi Nevin's bandages as the plastic surgeon washed his hands at the basin and then departed. Shelly began to cry. She said, “Vi. Vi. Vi, baby doll. I di'n't mean none of it. Not one single word,” and she took up the limp hand that lay on the bedclothes and pressed it to her heart as if the beating within her bony chest would somehow confirm what she was saying. “Wha's the matter with her?” she demanded of the nurse. “Wha've you done to her?”
“She's sedated, miss.” The nurse pursed her lips in disapproval as she put the final bit of tape on the gauze.
“But she'll be all right, won’ she?”
Lynley glanced at the nurse before saying, “She'll recover.”
“Bu’ her face. All them bandages. Wha's he done t'her face?”
“That's where he beat her.”
Shelly Platt wept harder. “No. No. Oh Vi. I'm that sorry. I di'n't mean no real harm on you. I was cheesed off, tha's all. You know how I am.”
The nurse crinkled her nose at this display of emotion. She left the room.
“She's going to need plastic surgery,” Lynley told Shelly when they were alone. “And then…” He sought a clear but compassionate way of explaining to the girl what the future was likely to hold for Vi Nevin. “There's a very good chance she's going to find her professional options narrower than they were before.” He waited to see if Shelly would understand without a more graphic explanation. Un-pretty as she was but still on the game, she would have to know what facial scars presaged for a woman who'd earned her substantial keep by playing Lolita for her clients.
Shelly moved an anguished gaze from Lynley to her friend. “I'll take care of her, then. F'm now on, and every single minute. I'll take care of my Vi.” She kissed Vis hand and clutched it harder and wept harder still.
“She needs to rest now,” Lynley told her.
“I'm not leaving Vi till she knows I'm here.”
“You can wait with the constable. I'll see to it that he allows you in the room once an hour.”
Shelly parted with Vi's hand only reluctantly In the corridor she said, “You'll go affer him, won’ you? You'll cart him off to the nick straightaway?” And it was those two questions that haunted Lynley all the way to the Yard.
Martin Reeve had it all in the attack on Vi Nevin: motive, means, and opportunity. He had a lifestyle to maintain and a wife whose drug habit needed feeding. He couldn't afford to lose any income. If one girl managed to leave him successfully, there was nothing to prevent another girl-or ten girls-from following suit. And if he allowed that to happen, he'd soon be out of business altogether. Because the two necessary participants in prostitution are the prostitutes themselves and their willing punters. Pimps are expendable. And Martin Reeve was aware of that fact. He would rule over his women by example and fear: by illustrating the extremes he was willing to go to to protect his domain and by implying-through those extremes-that what happened to one girl could easily happen to another. Vi Nevin had served as an object lesson for the rest of Reeve's women. The only question was whether Nicola Maiden and Terry Cole were object lessons as well.
There was one way to find out: get Reeve to the Yard without a solicitor in tow and outsmart him once he was present. But to do that, Lynley knew that he was going to need to outmanoeuvre the man, and his options in that particular realm were limited.
Lynley looked for a means of manipulation in the photographs of the maisonette, which the police photographer had rushed to him that morning. He studied in particular a shoe print on the kitchen floor, and he wondered if the pattern of hexagons on the shoe's sole was rare enough to count for something. Certainly, it ought to be sufficient to get a warrant. And, warrant in hand, three or four officers could tear apart MKR Financial Management and find evidence of Reeve's true business dealings, even if he'd been clever enough to rid himself of the shoes with those hexagonally marked soles. Once they had that evidence, they'd be in a position to intimidate the pimp. Which was exactly where Lynley wanted to be.
He looked through more of the pictures, flipping them one by one onto his desk. He was still in the process of examining them for something useful, when Barbara Havers charged into his office.
“Holy hell,” she said without preamble, “wait till you hear what I've got, Inspector.” And she began to chatter about an auction house on Cork Street, someone called Sitwell, Soho Square, and King-Ryder Productions. “So I saw this painting when I left his digs,” she concluded triumphantly. “And believe me, sir, if you'd got a glimpse of Cilia's work in Battersea, you'd agree it's a hell of a lot more than a simple coincidence that I'd stumble across anyone in God's creation who'd actually bought one of her disgusting pieces.” She flopped into one of the chairs in front of his desk and scooped up the photographs. She said, giving them a cursory examination, “King-Ryder's our boy. And you can write that in my blood if you'd like to.”
Lynley observed her over the top of his spectacles. “What led you in that direction? Is there a connection between Mr. King-Ryder and Maiden's SO 10 time that you've uncovered? Because in your report you didn't mention…” He paused, wondering and not liking his wondering. “Havers, how did you get on to King-Ryder?”
She kept up a resolute study of the pictures as she replied. But she spoke in a rush. “It was like this, sir. I found a business card at Terry Cole's flat. An address as well. And I thought… Well, I know I should have turned it over to you straightaway, but it slipped my mind when you sent me back to CRIS. And as things turned out, I had a bit of free time yesterday when I finished the report and-” She hesitated, her attention still on the pictures. But when she finally looked up, her expression had altered, less sure now than when she'd strode into the room. “Since I had that card and the address, I went over to Soho Square and then down to Cork Street and… Inspector, gosh. What difference does it make what led me to him? King-Ryder's lying, and if he's lying, we both know there's just one reason why.”
Lynley placed the rest of the pictures on his desk. He said: “I'm not following this. We've established the connection between our two victims: prostitution and the advertisement of prostitution. We've developed an understanding of another possible motive: a common pimp's vengeance for an act of betrayal by two girls in his stable, one of whom-by the way-he beat up last night. No one can confirm that pimp's alibi for Tuesday night other than his wife, whose word doesn't appear to be worth the breath she uses to speak it. What we have left to root out is the missing weapon, which may very well be sitting somewhere in Martin Reeve's house. Now, all of that being established, Havers, and established-I'd like to add-through doing the sort of police work you appear to be avoiding these days, I'd be grateful if you would list the facts that establish Matthew King-Ryder as our killer.”
She didn't reply, but Lynley saw the ugly flush begin to splodge her neck.
He said, “Barbara, I'm hoping your conclusions are the result of footwork and not intuition.”
Havers’ colour deepened. “You always say that coincidence doesn't exist when it comes to murder, Inspector.”
“So I do. But what's the coincidence?”
“That painting. The Cilia Thompson monstrosity. What's he doing with a painting by Terry Cole's flatmate? You can't argue he's bought it to hang on his wall when it was out with his rubbish, so it's got to mean something. And I think it must mean-”
“You think it means he's a killer. But you have no motive for his committing this killing, have you?”
“I've just begun. I only went to see King-Ryder initially because Terry Cole had been sent there by this bloke Neil Sitwell. I didn't expect to uncover one of Cilia's paintings by his door, and when I did, I was gobsmacked. Well, who wouldn't be? Five minutes earlier and King-Ryder was telling me that Terry Cole came to talk to him about a grant. I leave the flat, trying to adjust my thinking to the new information, and there's this painting in the rubbish that tells me King-Ryder has a connection to this killing he's not talking about.”
“A connection to the killing?” Lynley allowed his scepticism to underscore the words. “Havers, all you've uncovered at the moment is the fact that King-Ryder may have a connection to someone who's connected to someone who's been murdered in the company of a woman with whom he has no connection at all.”
“But-”
“No. No but, Havers. No and and no if, if it comes down to it. You've been fighting me every inch of the way on this case, and that's got to stop. I've assigned you a task, which you've largely ignored because you don't like it. You've gone your own way to the detriment of the team-”
“That's not fair!” she protested. “I did the report. I put it on your desk.”
“Yes. And I've read it.” Lynley rooted out the paperwork. He picked it up and used it to emphasise his words as he went on. “Barbara, do you think I'm stupid? Do you suppose I'm incapable of reading between the lines of what's posing as the work of a professional?”
She lowered her eyes. She was still holding some of the photographs of Vi Nevin's destroyed home, and she fastened her gaze upon these. Her fingers whitened as her grasp on them tightened, and her colour deepened its revealing hue.
Thank God, Lynley thought. He finally had her attention. He warmed to his theme. “When you're given an assignment, you're expected to complete it. Without question or argument. And when you complete it, you're expected to turn in a report that reflects the dispassionate language of the disinterested professional. And after that you're expected to await your next assignment with a mind that remains open and capable of assimilating information. What you're not expected to do is create a disguised commentary on the wisdom of the investigation's course should you happen to disagree with it. This”-he slapped her report against his palm-“is an excellent illustration of why you're in the position you're in right now. Given an order that you neither like nor agree with, you take matters into your own hands. You go your own way with complete disregard for everything from the chain of command to public safety. You did that three months ago in Essex, and you're doing it now. When any other DC would be toeing the line in the hope of redeeming his name and reputation if not his career, you're still pig-headedly trotting along on whatever path pleases you most at the moment. Aren't you?”
Head still lowered, she made no reply. But her breathing had altered, becoming shallow with the effort to hold back emotion. She seemed, at least for the moment, suitably chastened. He was gratified to see it.
“All right,” he said. “Now hear me well. I want a warrant to tear Reeve's house apart. I want a team of four officers to do the tearing. I want from that house a single pair of shoes with hexagons on the soles and every scrap of evidence you can find on the escort service. May I put you on this and be assured that you'll carry through as directed?”
She made no reply.
He felt exasperation plague him. “Havers, are you listening to me?”
“A search.”
“Yes. That's what I said. I want a search warrant. And when you've got it, I want you on the team that goes to Reeve's house.”
She raised her head from the pictures. “A bloody search,” she said, and her face was unaccountably altered now, bright with a smile. “Yes. Yes. Bloody hell, Inspector. By God. That's absolutely it.”
“That's what?”
“Don't you see?” She shook one of the pictures in her excitement. “Sir, don't you see? You're thinking of Martin Reeve because his motive's been established and it's so bloody obvious that any other motive is small beans in comparison. And because his motive's so out there for you, everything you come across ends up getting attached to it, whether it belongs attached or not. But if you forget about Reeve for a moment, you can see in these pictures that-”
“Havers.” Lynley fought against the tide of his own incredulity. The woman was unquashable, unsinkable, and ungovernable. For the first time, he wondered how he'd ever managed to work with her at all. “I'm not going to repeat your assignment after this. I'm going to give it to you. And you're going to do it.”
“But I only want you to see that-”
“No! God damn it! Enough. Get the warrant. I don't care what you have to do to get it. But get it. Put together a team from CID. Go to that house. Tear it apart. Bring me shoes with hexagonal markings on the sole and evidence of the escort service. Better yet, bring me a weapon that could have been used on Terry Cole. Is that clear? Now, go.”
She stared at him. For a moment he believed she would actually defy him. And in that moment he knew how DO Barlow must have felt out on the North Sea in pursuit of a suspect and having her every decision second-guessed by a subordinate who was incapable of keeping her opinions to herself. Havers was damned lucky Barlow hadn't been the officer with the gun in that boat. Had the DO been armed, that North Sea chase might have come to a very different conclusion.
Havers rose. Carefully, she placed the photographs of Vi Nevin's maisonette on his desk. She said, “A warrant, a search. A team of four officers. I'll see to it, Inspector.”
Her tone was measured. It was utterly polite, deeply respectful, and completely proper.
Lynley chose to ignore what all of that meant.
Martin Reeve's palms itched. He pressed his fingernails into them. They began to burn. Tricia had backed him when he needed her to back him with that butthole of a cop, but he couldn't depend on her to hold to the story. If someone promised her enough of the beast at a moment when her stash was low and she wanted to crank up, she'd say or do anything. All the cops had to do was to get her alone, get her away from the house, and she'd be butter on their toast in less than two hours. And he couldn't watch over her every frigging minute of every God damn day for the rest of their lives to make sure that didn't happen.
Whattaya wanna know? Gimme the stuff.
Just sign on the line, Mrs. Reeve, and you'll have it.
And it would be done. No. Better. He would be done. So he had to firm up his story.
On the one hand, he could muscle a lie from someone who already knew firsthand what could come from refusing his request. On the other hand, he could demand the truth from someone else who might take an appeal for common veracity as a sign of weakness. Go the first way, and he ended up owing a favour, which handed the reins of his life to someone else. Go the second way, and he looked like a pantywaist who could be dissed without fear of reprisal.
So the situation was a basic no-winner: Caught between a rock and a hard place, Martin wanted to find enough dynamite to blast a passageway while keeping the damage from falling stones to a minimum.
He went to Fulham. All his current troubles had their genesis there, and it was there that he was determined to find the solutions as well.
He got into the building on Rostrevor Road the easy way: He rang each bell in rapid succession and waited for the fool who would buzz him inside without asking him to identify himself over the intercom.
He dashed up the stairs, but at the landing he paused. A sign was affixed to the maisonette's door, and even from where he stood, he could read it. Crime Scene, it announced. Do Not Enter.
“Shit,” Martin said.
And he heard the cop's low, terse voice once again, as clearly as if he were on the landing as well. “Tell me about Vi Nevin.”
“Fuck,” Martin said. Was she dead?
He dug up the answer by descending the stairs and knocking up the residents of the flat directly beneath Vi Nevin's front door. They'd been giving a party on the night before, but they hadn't been too occupied with their guests-or too smashed-to take note of the arrival of an ambulance. Much had been done by the paramedics to shield the shrouded form they carried out of the building, but the haste with which they removed her and the subsequent appearance of what had seemed like a score of policemen who began asking questions throughout the building suggested that she'd been the victim of a crime.
“Dead?” Martin grabbed onto the young man's arm when he would have turned back into his flat to catch up on more of the sleep of which Martin's appearance at his door had robbed him. “Wait. Damn it. Was she dead?”
“She wasn't in a body bag” was the indifferent reply. “But she might've popped her clogs in hospital during the night.”
Martin cursed his luck and, back in his car, got out his London Streetfinder. The nearest hospital was the Chelsea and Westminster on the Fulham Road, and he drove there directly If she was dead, he was done for.
The nurse in casualty informed him that Miss Nevin had been moved. Was he a relative?
An old friend, Martin told her. He'd been to her home and discovered there'd been an accident… some sort of trouble…? If he could see Vi and set his mind at rest that she was all right… So that he in turn could let their mutual friends and her relatives know…? He should have shaved, he thought. He should have worn the Armani jacket. He should have prepared for an eventuality beyond the simple knocking on a door, gaining admittance, and coercing cooperation.
Miss Schubert-for such was the name on her identification badge-eyed him with the open animosity of the overworked and the underpaid. She consulted a clipboard and gave him a room number. He didn't miss the fact that when he thanked her and headed towards the elevators, she reached for a phone.
Thus, he wasn't entirely unprepared for the sight of a uniformed constable seated outside the closed door of Vi Nevin's room. He was, however, completely unprepared for the appearance of the orange-haired harpy in a crumpled pantsuit who was sitting next to the cop. She leapt to her feet and came hurtling in Martin's direction the moment she saw him.
She shrieked, “It's 'im, it's 'im, it's 'im!” She flew at Martin like a starving hawk with a rabbit in sight, and she sank her talons into the front of his shirt and screeched, “I'll kill you. Bastard. Bastard!”
She shoved him into the wall and butted him with her head. His own head flew back and smacked against the edge of a notice board. His jaw clamped shut. Teeth sinking into his tongue, he tasted blood. She'd ripped the buttons from his shirt and gone for his neck when the constable finally managed to pull her off. Whereupon she began screaming, “Arrest him! He's the one! Arrest him! Arrest him!” and the constable asked for Martin's ID. He somehow dispersed a small crowd that had gathered at the end of the corridor to watch the unfolding scene, a minor kindness for which Martin was grateful.
The woman held at arm's length from him, Martin was able to recognise her at last. It was the hair colour that had thrown him off. When they'd met-when she'd come for her first and only interview at MKR-she'd been black-haired. Otherwise, she was little changed. Still skeletal, still sallow-skinned, with very bad teeth, even worse breath, and the body odour of three-day-old halibut.
“Shelly Platt,” he said.
“You did it! You tried to kill her!”
Martin wondered how his day could possibly get worse. He had his answer a moment later. The constable studied his identification, still holding Shelly in a death-grip. He said, “Miss, miss, one thing at a time,” and he took her with him while he went to the phone at the nurses’ station and punched in a number.
“Look,” Martin called to him. “I only want to know if Miss Nevin's all right. I spoke to someone in casualty. I was told she'd been transferred here.”
“He wants to kill her!” Shelly cried.
“Don't be an idiot,” Martin responded. “I'd hardly show up in the middle of the day and present my ID if I planned to kill her. What the hell happened?”
“As if you don't know!”
“I just need to talk to her,” he told the constable when he was returned his ID and refused admittance. “That's all. It probably won't take five minutes.”
“Sorry” was the reply.
“Look. I don't think you understand. This is an urgent matter and-”
“Aren’ you going t’arrest him?” Shelly demanded. “Wha's he have t'do to her before you lot cart him off to the nick?”
“Will you at least shut her up long enough for me to explain to you that-”
“Orders're orders,” the constable said, and he loosened his grip on Shelly Platt just enough to indicate to Martin that a temporary retreat was called for.
He made that retreat with as much grace as he could muster, considering that the orange-haired termagant had raised enough ruckus for him to become the cynosure of the entire hospital floor. He returned to the Jaguar, threw himself inside, and flicked its air conditioning on full blast with every vent pointing at his face.
Shit, he thought. Fuck, hell, shit. He had little doubt about who had been on the receiving end of that constable's phone call, so he'd put himself in line for another visit from the cops. He considered what sort of light he was going to shine upon his trip to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. “Getting corroboration for my story last night” hardly seemed credible when one considered from whom he was attempting to wrest corroboration in the first place.
He jerked the car into gear and roared out of the car park. On the Fulham Road once more, he pulled down the sun visor and used the recessed mirror within it to examine the damage Shelly Platt had done to him. Jesus, she was a vicious little cat. She'd managed to draw blood on his chest when she'd grabbed his shirt. He'd be wise to get a tetanus shot pronto.
He cut up Finborough Road, heading for home and considering what options were available to him now. It appeared that there was no way he was going to get close to Vi Nevin any time soon and, since the cop on guard in front of her room had no doubt phoned that goon who'd dropped by Lansdowne Road in the middle of the previous night, it also appeared that there was no way he was going to get close to her any time at all. At least not while the cops were doing their bloodhound bit on the Maiden whore's killing, and that might go on for months. He had to develop another plan to get corroboration for his alibi, and he found his mind feverishly coming up with one scenario, only to dismiss it and come up with another.
On the Exhibition Hall side of Earl's Court Station, he stopped for a traffic light. He waved off a street urchin who wanted to wash his windscreen for fifty p, and he observed a hooker in negotiations with a potential client by the Underground entrance. He made an instant evaluation of her in a knee-jerk reaction to the sight of her Band-Aid-size skirt of magenta spandex, her black polyester blouse with its plunging neckline and its senseless ruffles, her stiletto heels and her fishnet stockings: She was a hand-or-mouth bitch only, he decided. Twenty-five pounds if the John was desperate; no more than ten if she and her coke habit were working the street together.
The light changed, and as he drove off, Martin's sense of grievance against the police began to grow in him. He was doing the whole shitting city one hell of a favour, he decided, and no one-least of all the cops-seemed to realise or appreciate that. His girls didn't clutter up the sidewalks making deals with clients, and they sure as hell didn't pollute the landscape by dressing like something out of an adolescent's wet dream. They were refined, educated, attractive, and discreet, and if they did take money for engaging in the odd sexual encounter or two and if they did pass on a percentage to him, who made it possible for them to be in the company of wealthy and successful men who were willing to recompense them richly for their services, who the hell cared? Who the hell did it hurt? No one. The bottom line was that sex had a place in men's lives that it did not have in the lives of women. For men it was a signature act, primal and necessary to their identity. Their wives grew tired of it or bored by it, but the men did not. And if someone was prepared to provide those men with access to women who welcomed their attentions, women willing to allow their bodies to be the soft and pliable wax into which those men poured their juices not to mention left the indelible impression of their very characters, why couldn't money be exchanged for such a service? And why couldn't someone-like himself-with the organisational skills and the vision to recruit exceptional women for the entertainment of exceptional men be allowed to make a living doing it?
If the laws had been written by visionaries like himself and not by a group of spineless jerks who were more concerned with being able to feed at the public trough than they were with being even marginally realistic about activities participated in by consenting adults, Martin thought, then he wouldn't have been in the position he was in at this very moment. He wouldn't be scrambling for someone who could vouch for his whereabouts and get the police off his back, because the police would never have been on his back in the first place. And even if they had come calling and had asked their questions and made their demands, they wouldn't have had a single thing to hold over his head to gain cooperation because he wouldn't have been living on the wrong side of the law in the first place.
And what sort of country was it, anyway, where prostitution was legal but living off prostitution wasn't? What was prostitution but a means of livelihood? And who the hell were they kidding trying to regulate it from Westminster, when three-quarters of those hypocrites who planted their asses on those green leather benches were screwing their eyeballs out with any secretary, student, or parliamentary assistant who appeared even remotely willing?
Fuck it, the entire situation made him want to punch holes through walls. And the more he thought of it, the angrier he became. And the angrier he became, the more he focused on the cause of all his current troubles. Forget Maiden and Nevin, he realised. They were taken care of, after all. They hadn't been the ones to spill their miserable guts to the cops. Tricia, on the other hand, remained to be dealt with.
He spent the rest of the drive considering how best to do this. What he came up with wasn't pleasant, but when was it pleasant when a notable figure on the social scene loses his wife to heroin despite his best efforts to save her from herself and to shield her from the displeasure of her family and the censure of an unforgiving public?
He felt his mood lift. His lips curved upwards, and he began to hum. He made the turn from Lansdowne Walk into Lansdowne Road.
And there he saw them.
Four men were mounting the front steps to his house, with PLAINCLOTHES COPS written all over them. They were beefy, tall, and designed to tyrannise. They looked like gorillas in fancy dress.
Martin hit the accelerator. He swerved into the drive. He was out of the Jaguar and up the steps in their wake before they had a chance to ring the bell. “What do you want?” he demanded.
Gorilla One removed a white envelope from the pocket of a leather bomber jacket. “Search warrant,” he said.
“What? Search for what?”
“Are you opening the door or are we breaking it down?”
“I'm phoning my solicitor.” Martin shoved past them and unlocked the door.
“Whatever you want,” Gorilla Two said.
They followed him inside. Gorilla One gave instructions as Martin raced for the phone. Two of the cops were right on his heels and into his office. The other two pounded up the stairs. Shit, he thought, and he shouted, “Hey! My wife's up there!”
“They'll say hello,” Gorilla One said.
As Martin frantically punched in the phone number, One began removing books from the shelves and Two went for a filing cabinet. “I want you fuckers out of here,” Martin told them.
“Right,” said Two, “I s'pose you do.”
“And we all want something,” said One with a smirk.
Upstairs, a door crashed back against a wall. Muffled voices accompanied the noise of furniture being roughly shoved round a room. In Martin's office the cops made their search with a minimum of effort and a maximum of mess: They strewed books on the floor, took pictures from the walls, and emptied the filing cabinet in which Martin kept scrupulous records for the escort service. Gorilla Two bent and, with cigar-stub fingers, began sifting through them.
“Shit,” Martin hissed, receiver to his ear. Where was that fucker Polmanteer?
On the other end of the line the phone at his solicitor's home double-rang four times. His answer machine clicked on. Martin cursed, disconnected, and tried the solicitor's mobile. Where would he be on a Sunday, for God's sake? The slimy bastard couldn't have gone to church.
The mobile brought him no better results. He slammed down the receiver and rooted in his desk for the solicitor's card. Gorilla Two elbowed him to one side. He said, “Sorry, sir. Can't let you remove-”
“I'm not removing a fucking thing! I'm looking for my solicitor's pager.”
“Wouldn't keep it in your desk, would he?” One asked from the shelves, where he continued his work. Books thunked to the floor.
“You know what I mean,” Martin said to Two. “I want the number of his pager. It's on a card. I know my rights. Now, step aside or I won't be responsible-”
“Martin? What is it? What's going on? There're men in our room and they've emptied the wardrobe and… What's going on?”
Martin spun round. Tricia was in the doorway, unshowered, undressed, and unpainted. She looked like the hags who sat on their sleeping bags and begged money in the subway at Hyde Park Corner. She looked like what she was: a smack-head.
His hands started to burn once again. He dug his nails into his palms. Tricia had been the single cause of his every difficulty for the last twenty years. And now she was the cause of his downfall.
He said, “God damn it. God damn it. You!” And he plunged across the room. He grabbed her by the hair and managed to ram her head against the door jamb before the cops were on him. “Stupid cunt!” he shouted as they dragged him off her. And then to the police, “All right. All right” as he shook off their hold on him. “Call your asshole boss. Tell him I'm ready to deal.”