In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(152)

Why had he reacted so violently to the knowledge of her infidelity? Lynley wondered now as he braked to avoid a pack of cyclists who were negotiating the right turn onto North End Road. He watched them idly—all business in their helmets and spandex—and considered the question, not only for what it revealed about his adolescence but also for what its answer implied about the case in hand. The answer, he decided, had to do with love and with the insidious and often unreasonable expectations that always seemed to attach themselves to the very fact of loving. How often we want the love object to be an extension of ourselves, he thought. And when that doesn't happen—because it never can—our frustration demands that we take action to alleviate the turmoil we feel.

But, he realised, there was more than one kind of turmoil that was becoming apparent in the relationships that Nicola Maiden had had. While thwarted desire played a part in her life—and very possibly in her death—he couldn't overlook the place that was occupied by jealousy, revenge, avarice, and hate. All those crippling passions caused turmoil. Any one of them could drive someone to murder.

Rostrevor Road was a mere half mile south of Fulham Broadway, and the door of Vi Nevin's building was propped open when Lynley climbed the steps. A hand-lettered sign on the jamb explained why, as did the noise coming from a ground floor flat whose door was also propped open. Tildy and Steve's Digs at the Rear were the words written out in multi-coloured felt pen on a sheet of heavy paper. Smoke Outside, Please! was the request made beneath.

The noise from within was considerable as the partygoers were enjoying the musical talents of an unidentifiable group of males who were gutturally advising members of their sex to use her, abuse her, have her, and lose her, all to the accompaniment of percussion, electric guitar, and brass. None of this sounded particularly mellifluous in combination, Lynley decided. He was getting older—and, alas, stuffier—than he thought. He headed for the stairs and dashed upwards.

The corridor lights were on a timer, with a push button at the bottom of the stairs. There were windows on the landing, but as darkness had fallen, these did very little to dispel the gloom above the ground floor of the building. So Lynley punched for the lights on Vi Nevin's floor and strode towards her door.

She hadn't been willing to tell the truth about how she'd come to meet Nicola Maiden in the first place. She hadn't been willing to name the man who had originally financed the rooms in which she lived. There were probably a score of other facts that she could part with if the psychological thumb-screws were applied with enough finesse.

Lynley felt up to the task of applying them. Although Vi Nevin was nobody's fool and unlikely to be tricked into revealing information, she was also living at the edge of the law and, like the Reeves, she'd be willing to compromise if compromise was what would keep her in business.

He rapped sharply on her door. There was a brass knocker, so he knew she'd be able to hear his knock despite the music and shouting from the party below. However, there was no answer from within, which upon reflection was hardly a circumstance worthy of suspicion since it was a Saturday night and—whether she was out servicing a client or otherwise engaged—a woman away from home on a Saturday night was nothing to raise the alarm about.

He removed one of his cards from his jacket, put on his glasses, and slid a pen from his pocket to leave her a note. He wrote and returned the pen to his pocket. He fixed the card to the door at the height of the knob.

And then he saw it.

Blood. An unmistakable thumbprint upon the door knob. A second smear some eight inches higher, rising at an angle on the door from the jamb.

“Christ.” Lynley used his fist against the door. “Miss Nevin?” he called. Then he shouted, “Vi Nevin!”

There was no answer. There was no sound from within.

Lynley pulled his wallet from his trouser pocket, extracted a credit card, and applied it to the old Banham latch.





[page]CHAPTER 22


o you have any idea what you've done? Any idea at all?”

How long had it been since she'd shot up? Martin Reeve wondered. And could he hope against unlikely hope that the pathetic smack-head had hallucinated the encounter and not actually lived it in the first place? Strictly speaking, that was possible. Tricia never answered the door when he wasn't in. Her paranoia was far too advanced for that. So why the hell would she have answered it this time, when nearly everything that comprised their lifestyle was sitting at the edge of a cliff just waiting for someone to make a wrong move and send it hurtling down to the boulders below?

But he knew the answer to that question well enough. She would have answered the door because she was brainless, because she couldn't be trusted to think in a straight line from action to consequence of action for five minutes, because if anyone on the face of the earth even prompted her to think that her pipeline of dope was in danger of being stopped up in some way, she would do anything to prevent that happening, and answering a door was the least of that anything. She would sell her body, she would sell her soul, she would sell them both down the God damn river. Which was, apparently, what the airheaded bitch had actually managed to do while he was out.

He'd found her in their bedroom, nodding away in her white wicker rocker next to the window, with a sword's width of illumination from the streetlight outside falling across her left shoulder and gilding her breast. She was completely nude, and an oval cheval mirror, drawn near to the rocker, reflected the ghostly perfection of her body.