In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(103)

But in Nicola's case, nearly everything had been accounted for: from her lifestyle in London to her supply of dosh. They still had to discover why she'd gone to work in Derbyshire for the summer, but what on earth could that possibly have to do with her murder?

On the other hand, virtually nothing about Terry Cole's life had made sense at all. Until Barbara had unearthed the postcards.

She gazed upon them in their orderly rows on the day bed and pursed her lips. Come on, she told them, give me something to run with. I know it's here, I know one of you can tell me, I know, I know.

She could still hear Cilia Thompson's passionate reaction to seeing the cards: “He never would've told me about this. Never in a hundred years. He was pretending to be an artist, for God's sake. And artists spend their time on their art. When they're not creating, they're thinking about creating. They're not crawling round London sticking these up everywhere. Art begets art so you expose yourself to art. This”—with a contemptuous gesture towards the cards—“is a life exposed to absolute crap.”

But Terry had never been truly interested in art, Barbara guessed. He'd been interested in something else entirely.

In the first set of postcards, there were forty-five in all. Each, Barbara saw, was different. And no matter how she studied them, categorized them, or attempted to eliminate them one by one, she was finally forced to accept the fact that only the telephone—even at this hour of the night—was going to assist her in sussing out her next move in the investigation.

She deliberately set aside any consideration that Terry Cole might be connected to Andy Maiden's past in SO 10. She set aside any consideration that SO 10 was involved in the case at all.

Instead, she reached for the phone. She knew quite well that—despite the hour—at the other end of the line would be forty-five suspects just waiting for someone to ring them and ask a few questions.

By rising at dawn the next morning and driving to Manchester Airport, Lynley managed to catch the first flight to London. It was nine-forty when his taxi left him at the front door of his house in Eaton Terrace.

He paused before entering. Despite the brightness of the morning—with the sun glittering against the transom windows of the houses that lined the quiet street—he felt as if he were walking directly beneath a cloud. His eyes took in the fine white buildings, the wrought iron railings that fronted them without a spot of rust marring their midnight paint, and regardless of the fact that he'd been born into the longest period of peace that his country had ever experienced, he found himself unaccountably thinking of war.

London had been devastated. Night after night the bombs fell upon it, reducing large areas of the metropolis to bricks, mortar, beams, and rubble. The City, the docklands, and the suburbs—both north and south of the river—had sustained the worst of the damage, but no one in the nation's capital had escaped the fear. It was heralded nightly by the sound of the sirens and the whistling of the bombs. It was embodied by explosions, fires, panic, confusion, uncertainty, and the aftermath of them all.

Yet London had continued to persevere, renewing itself as it had done for two thousand years. Boadicea's tribesmen had not vanquished it, neither the plague nor the Great Fire had subdued it, so the firestorm of the Blitz could not have hoped to defeat it. Because out of pain, destruction, and loss it always managed to rise anew.

So perhaps it could be argued that strife and travail could lead one to greatness, Lynley thought, that ones sense of purpose, once tested by adversity, became reliably firm and one's understanding of the world, once questioned in the midst of sorrow and misconception, was forever enhanced. But the thought that bombs ultimately led to peace as a woman's labour led to birth was not enough to dispel the gloom and dread that he was feeling. Good could come out of bad, it was true. It was the hell in between that he didn't want to ponder.

At six that morning he'd phoned DI Hanken and told him that “some crucial information uncovered by the London officers working the case” required his presence back in town. He would be communicating with Derbyshire as soon as he followed up on that information. To Hanken's logical query about the necessity of Lynley's traveling to London when he had two officers already working there and could—with a simple telephone call—garner two or even two dozen more, Lynley replied that his team had uncovered a few details that were making it look as if London and not Derbyshire was where the facts were leading. It seemed reasonable, he said, for one of the two ranking officers on the case to assess and assemble these facts in person. Would Hanken make available to him a copy of the post-mortem report? he asked. He also wanted to hand that document over to a forensic specialist, to see if Dr. Myles's conclusion about the murder weapon was accurate.

“If she's made an error about the knife—the length of the blade, for example—I'd like to know that at once,” he said.

How would a forensic specialist be able to discern an error in the report without seeing the body, the x-rays, the photographs, or the wound itself? Hanken queried.

This, Lynley told him, was no ordinary specialist.

But he asked for copies of the x-rays and the photographs as well. And a quick stop at the Buxton station on his way to the airport had put everything into his possession.

For his part, Hanken was going to start a search for the Swiss Army knife and the Maiden girl's missing rain gear. He would also be talking personally to the masseuse who'd seen to Will Upman's ostensibly tense muscles on Tuesday night. And if time allowed, he'd pay a call at Broughton Manor to see if Julian Britton's father could confirm his son's alibi or that of his niece.