In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(148)

“As your wife?”

“I love Chloe. But there's more than one kind of love in a man's life—which you may know already or will come to know eventually—and selfishly, I hoped to experience it.” He dropped his gaze to the deformed nails at the ends of his fingers. He said, “I felt sexual love for Nikki, the sort that has to do with physical possession. Animal craving. My love for Chloe, on the other hand, is the stuff of our history. When I knew I had this other love for Nikki—this sexual thing that I found I couldn't get out of my mind the more we met—I told myself it was natural to feel it. She was meeting a tremendous need of mine. And no matter what I wanted, she was willing to do it to me. But when I saw there was so much more to her than domination …”

“You became reluctant to share her with other men.”

“An intuitive leap. Yes, you are very good.”

Nicola visited the Boltons at least five times a week, Beattie told them. And he explained the frequency of their sessions to Chloe by talking about the heightened stress of his work as younger doctors and advances in medicine had increased his level of anxiety to the point that only discipline could relieve it.

“I told Nikki that when the craving came upon me, I wanted her available to gratify it at once,” he said.

“But the reality was more complicated than that?”

“The reality was infinitely simple. I couldn't cope with imagining Nikki doing to others—and being to others—what she was doing and being to me. Thinking of her with anyone else was a quick descent into hell. And I didn't expect that, to feel that way about a tart. But then, when I took her on, I didn't know how much more than a tart she was going to be.”

Without his wife's knowledge, he'd offered Nicola a special deal. He would pay to keep her—and pay her, more than she'd ever dreamed of being paid—in whatever situation she fancied for herself: a flat, a house, a hotel suite, a country cottage. He didn't care, just so long as she promised him that her time would be kept open solely for him. “I claimed that I didn't want to stand in a queue or book an appointment any longer,” Beattie explained. “But if I wanted her available to me at any hour, I had to place her in a position where she was free.”

The maisonette in Fulham gave her that position. And since Nicola always came to Sir Adrian and not the reverse, it was of little account to him that she asked to be allowed a flatmate as company for the periods of time when he didn't want her services. “That was fine with me,” he told them. “All I wanted was her to be available whenever I phoned. And for the first month that's what she was. Five or six days a week. Sometimes twice a day. She'd arrive within an hour of being paged. She'd stay as long as I wanted her to be here. The arrangement worked well.”

“But then she returned to Derbyshire. Why?”

“She claimed that she needed to honour a commitment to work for a solicitor up there, that she'd be gone only for the summer. I was a fool in love, but not so much of a fool as to believe that. I told her I wouldn't go on paying for the Fulham place if she wasn't going to be in town for me.”

“But she went anyway. She was willing to risk losing what she had from you. What does that suggest?”

“The obvious. I knew that if she was returning to Derbyshire despite what I was paying her—and providing her—to be here in London, there had to be a reason and the reason was money. Someone there was paying her more than I was. Which meant, of course, another man.”

“The solicitor.”

“I accused her. She denied it. And I have to admit that an ordinary solicitor couldn't have afforded her, not without an independent source of income. So it was someone else. But she wouldn't name him no matter what I threatened. ‘It's only for the summer,’ she kept saying. And I kept bellowing, ‘I don't bloody care.’”

“You quarreled.”

[page]“Bitterly. I withdrew my support. I knew she'd have to go back to the escort service—or perhaps even to the street—if she wanted to keep the maisonette when she returned to London, and I was betting that she wouldn't want to do that. But I bet wrong. She left me anyway. And I lasted four days before I was on the phone, ready to give her anything to return to me. More money. A house. God, even my name.”

“But she wouldn't return.”

“She didn't mind being on the street, she said. Casually, this was. As if I'd asked her how she was finding Derbyshire. ‘We've got cards printed and Vi's are already out there,’ she said. ‘Mine'll be out there as well when I get back to town. I have no hard feelings about what's happened between you and me, Ady. And anyway, Vi says the phone's ringing day and night, so we'll be fine.’”

“Did you believe her?”

“I accused her of trying to drive me mad. I railed. Then I apologised. Then she played up to me on the phone. Then I wanted her desperately and couldn't bear to think of what she was giving him, whoever he was. Then I railed at her again. Stupid. Bloody stupid. But I was desperate to have her back. I would have done anything—” He stopped, seeming to realise how his words could be interpreted.

Lynley said, “On Tuesday night, Sir Adrian?”

“Inspector, I didn't kill Nikki. I couldn't have harmed her. I haven't even seen her since June. I'd hardly be standing here telling you all this if I'd … I couldn't have hurt her.”