In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(110)

Her mouth clamped shut. Her lips thinned like a spinsters hopes. Nkata let out a heavy breath on the word “damn.”

“Now.” Lynley used the word to gain time. He used the time to bring his temper to heel. “If you'd like to request placement with another DI, Havers, be plain about it. There's work to do.”

Five seconds ticked by. Nkata turned from the window. He and Havers exchanged a look that appeared to mean something to them but to Lynley was inscrutable.

“I'm not requesting another placement,” Havers finally said.

“Then you know what to do.”

She shared another look with Nkata. Then she gave her glance to Lynley. “Sir,” she said politely. And she left the office.

Lynley realised that he hadn't asked her one question regarding her search through the files. But it was a fact that didn't occur to him until he'd replaced Nkata behind his desk. And then he felt that to call her back would be to give her the advantage. Which was something he didn't want to do at that moment.

“We'll take the prostitution angle first,” he told Nkata. “That could give a man in love one hell of an incentive to kill.”

“It'd be ugly for a bloke, sussing out the fact that his woman's on the game.”

“And being on the game in London suggests the possibility of someone sussing it out here in London as well, wouldn't you agree?”

“I got no argument with that.”

“Then I suggest we begin by tracking the London lover,” Lynley finished. “And I've a fairly good idea where to start.”





[page]CHAPTER 16


i Nevin took the postcard from Lynley's fingers and, after glancing at it, set it carefully onto the spotless glass coffee table that served both the buttery sofa and the matching love seat which formed a right angle at one of its corners. She had placed herself on the sofa, leaving the love seat for Lynley and Nkata to crowd themselves onto. Nkata hadn't cooperated with the ploy, however. He'd stationed himself at the door to the maisonette, with his arms crossed and his body proclaiming no escape.

“You're the schoolgirl pictured on the card, aren't you?” Lynley began.

Vi reached for the portfolio she'd showed Havers and Nkata on the previous day. She slid this across the coffee table. “I pose for pictures, Inspector. That's what I do and that's what I get paid for. I don't know who's going to use them for what and I don't really care. As long as I get paid.”

“Are you saying that you're just a model for sexual services that someone else provides?” “That's what I'm saying.” “I see. Then what's the point of having your phone number on the card if you're not the ‘schoolgirl’ in question?”

Her gaze slid away from him. She was quick, fairly well educated, well spoken, and clever, but she hadn't thought quite that far ahead.

“You know, I don't have to talk to you,” she said. “And what I'm doing's not illegal, so please don't act like it is.”

Explaining the finer points of the law to her wasn't his purpose in coming to see her, Lynley told her. But if she was engaged in prostitution—

“Show me where it says on that card that anyone pays me for anything” she demanded.

If, Lynley repeated, she was engaged in prostitution, then he assumed she knew where the ice was thin and where it was not in her behaviour. That being the case—“Am I loitering somewhere. Am I soliciting in a public place?”

That being the case, he continued firmly, he would also assume that Miss Nevin was cognisant of how loosely and generously the word brothel could be defined by a magistrate with little patience with linguistic gymnastics. He glanced round the maisonette lest she not comprehend the full meaning of his comment.

She said, “Cops,” dismissively.

“Indeed” was Lynley's affable reply.

He and Nkata had driven directly to Fulham from New Scotland Yard. They'd found Vi Nevin unloading Sainsbury's carrier bags from a new Alfa Romeo, and when she'd caught a glimpse of Nkata as he eased his lengthy body from the Bentley, she said, “Why're you here again? Why aren't you out looking for Nikki's killer? Look, I don't have time to talk to you. I've an appointment in forty-five minutes.”

“Then I expect you'd like us to be gone in advance,” Lynley had said.

She'd flicked a glance at both men, looking for meaning. She said, “Give me a hand, then,” and passed two loaded carrier bags over to them.

She'd unpacked perishables into a large refrigerator: paté, Greek olives, prosciutto, Camembert, dolmades …

“Having a party?” Lynley had asked her. “Or is the food part of the … appointment, perhaps?”

Vi Nevin had shut the refrigerator door smartly and walked into the sitting room, where she'd taken up her position on the sofa. There she still sat, a retro-garbed figure in brogues and white socks, turned-up blue jeans, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar at attention, a scarf knotted at the throat, and a ponytail. She looked like a refugee from a James Dean film. All that was missing was the bubble gum.

She did not, however, speak like a refugee from a James Dean film. She might have been dressed like a gum-popping devotee of bop, but she spoke like a woman either born to advantage or self-made to appear that way. More likely the latter, Lynley would think as he interviewed her. Every now and then her careful persona slipped. Just a word here and there or a skewed pronunciation that inadvertently revealed her origins. Still, she wasn't what he would have expected to find at the other end of a phone box postcard advertising sex.