In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(107)

“Christ,” Lynley whispered. And when Nkata ended his phone call, he said as if an explanation in the light of day would negate the one he'd heard via phone from the constable in the dead of night, “Take me through it the entire situation beginning to end another time, Winnie.”

“Let me fetch Barb. The brainwork was hers.”

“Havers?” Lynley's tone stopped the other man from picking up the phone. “Winston, I told her I wanted her on the computer. You assured me that's what she was doing. Why's she involved in this end of the investigation?”

Nkata showed his palms, empty and innocent. He said, “She's not involved. I'd the box of cards in your motor when I came back here last evening from Battersea. I called in to see how she was doing on CRIS. She asked to take the cards along with her when she went home. To have a look through them. The rest … She can tell you how it played out.”

Nkata's face wore the guileless expression of a child at the knees of Father Christmas, declaring that there was more to the story than had been revealed. Lynley sighed. “Fetch her, then.”

Nkata reached for the phone. He punched in a few numbers and while waiting for the connection, said solemnly, “She's working CRIS right now. Been there since six this morning.”

“I'll kill the fatted calf,” Lynley replied.

Nkata, not given to biblical exegesis or allusion, said, “Right,” uncertainly. And then into the phone, “Guv's here, Barb.” That was the extent of it.

While they waited for Havers, Lynley examined the second postcard. He didn't want to think of the anguish that lay ahead for the parents of the murdered girl, however, so he gave his attention back to Nkata. “Anything else this morning, Winnie?”

“I'd a page from the Coles. Missus and the sister. That was the sister I was talking to just now.”

“And?”

“The boy's jacket's missing.”

“Jacket?”

“Right. A black leather jacket. He always wore it when he rode the big bike. When you gave Mrs. Cole that list of the kids effects—those receipts, remember?—the jacket wasn't on it. They think someone pinched it at the station in Buxton.”

Lynley recalled the photographs of the crime scene. He thought about the evidence that he'd looked through in Buxton. Then he said, “Are they certain about the jacket?”

“Generally wore it, they claimed. And he wouldn't've ridden all the way north in a T-shirt, which's all the covering it looked like he had … from the receipts, that is. He wouldn't've ever ridden on the motorway in only a T-shirt, they said.”

“It hasn't been cold though.”

“The jacket was for more'n warmth. It was also protection if he accidentally pranged the bike on the road. Wouldn't get so cut up with the jacket on, they explained. So where is it is what they want to know.”

“It wasn't among his things in the flat?”

“Barb went through his clobber, so she can tell you—” Nkata stopped himself abruptly. He had the grace to look abashed.

“Ah.” Lynley said, the syllable rich with meaning.

“She worked the computer half the night afterwards,” Nkata said hastily.

“Did she indeed. And whose idea was it that she accompany you to the Cole boy's flat?”

Havers’ advent saved Nkata from having to reply. She arrived as if on cue, all business with a notebook in her hand. She looked as professionally attired as Lynley had ever seen her.

She didn't flop into the chair in front of his desk as usual. She stood by the open door, her heels pressed against it as if holding her body at a respectful attention. To Lynley's question about the jacket, she responded after a moment in which she seemed to be attempting to read her fellow DCs face as if it were a barometer that would enable her to assess the climate in Lynley's office.

“The kid's gear?” she said carefully when Nkata's earnest nod towards Lynley apparently told her it was at least moderately safe to reveal that she'd once again been derelict in her duties. “Well. Hmmm.”

“We'll deal later with what you were supposed to be doing, Havers,” Lynley told her. “Was a black leather jacket among the boy's clothes?”

She managed to look uncomfortable, Lynley noted. There was a mercy in that. She licked her lips and cleared her throat. Everything was black, she reported. There were sweaters, shirts, T-shirts, and jeans in his clothes cupboard. But a jacket hadn't been among them, not a leather one at least.

“There was a lighter jacket though, a windcheater,” she said. “And a coat. Really long, like something from the Regency period. That was it.” A pause. And then she ventured, “Why?”

Nkata told her.

“Someone must have taken it from the crime scene” was her immediate assessment. To which she added, “Sir,” in Lynley's direction as if the respectful utterance might indicate a newly found reverence for authority.

Lynley thought about what her conjecture implied. Two garments now were missing from the crime scene: a jacket and a waterproof. So were they back to two killers?

“P'rhaps the jacket points the way to the killer,” Havers offered as if reading his mind.

“If our killers worried about forensic evidence, then he should have stripped the body completely. What does taking only the jacket gain him?”