In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(158)

“We're back to motive, Peter. Andy hasn't got one. But every other man in her life—not to mention one or two women—has.”

“Don't be so quick to dismiss him,” Hanken objected, “because there's more. Listen to this. I've identification on the substance we found on that odd chrome cylinder from the boot of her car. What d'you expect it is?”

“Tell me.”

“Semen. And there were two other semen deposits on it as well. We've two from secretors—that's counting the one you and I saw—and the other not. The only thing Kubowsky couldn't tell me is what the damn cylinder is in the first place. I've never seen anything like it and neither has she.”

“It's a ball stretcher,” Lynley told him.

“A what?”

“Hang on, Pete.” At the other end of the line, Hanken heard the rumble of male voices with continued hospital noises as counterpoint. Lynley got back to him, saying, “She'll pull through, thank God.”

“Can you get to her?”

“Unconscious at the moment.” And then to someone else, “Round-the-clock protection. No visitors without first clearing them with me. And ask for their IDs if anyone shows up …. No. I have no idea …. Right.” Then he was back. “Sorry. Where was I?”

“A ball stretcher.”

“Ah. Yes.”

Hanken listened as his colleague explained the device of torture. He felt his own testicles shrink in response.

“My guess is that it rolled out of one of her cases when she was en route to or from a client while she worked for Reeve,” Lynley concluded. “It could have been in the boot of her car for months.”

Hanken reflected on this and saw another possibility. He knew Lynley would fight it, so he broached the subject with care. “Thomas, she might have used it in Derbyshire. Perhaps on someone who's not admitting it.”

“I don't see either Upman or Britton going in for the whips-and-chains routine. And Ferrer seems more likely to use something on his women rather than vice versa. Who else is there?”

“Her dad.”

“Christ. Peter, that's a bloody sick thought.”

“Isn't it just. But the whole S & M scene's sick, and from what you've just told me, its major players look normal as hell.”

“There is no way—”

“Just listen.” And Hanken reported his interview with the dead girl's parents, including Nan Maiden's interruption of that interview and Andy Maidens feeble alibi. “So who's to say beyond doubt that Nicola wasn't servicing her dad along with everyone else?”

“Peter, you can't keep reinventing the case to fit your suspicions. If she was servicing her father—which, by the way, I would go to the rack protesting—then he can't have killed her because of her lifestyle which—as you recall—was your earlier position.”

“Then you agree he has a motive?”

“I agree that you're twisting my words.” A new spate of noise then ensued: sirens and a babble of voices. It sounded to Hanken as if the other DI were conducting their conversation in the middle of a motorway. When the noise abated slightly, Lynley said, “There's still what happened to Vi Nevin to consider. What happened tonight. If that's related to the doings in Derbyshire, you've got to see that Andy Maiden isn't involved.”

“Then who?”

“My money's on Martin Reeve. He had a bone to pick with both of the women.”

Lynley went on to say that their best hope was having Vi Nevin regain consciousness and name her attacker. Then they would have immediate grounds to drag Martin Reeve into the Met, where he belonged. “I'll stay for a while to see if she comes to,” he said. “If she doesn't in an hour or two, I'll have them ring me the moment her condition changes. What about you?”

Hanken sighed. He rubbed his tired eyes and stretched to ease the tension he was feeling in the muscles of his back. He thought of Will Upman and his stress management massages at the Manchester Airport Hilton. He could have done with one of those himself.

“I'll get on to Julian Britton,” he said. “Truth to tell, though, I can't see him as anyone's killer. A bloke dandling puppies in his spare time doesn't strike me as someone who'd bash in his lover's skull. And as for knifing a bloke into minced beef … more likely he'd sick the harriers on someone.”

“But if he believed he had powerful cause to kill her … ?” Lynley asked.

“Oh, to be sure.” Hanken agreed. “Someone believed he had powerful cause to kill Nicola Maiden.”

The doctor had given her sleeping pills, but Nan Maiden hadn't taken them after the first night. She couldn't afford to be less than vigilant, so she did nothing to encourage slumber. When she went to bed at all, she dozed. But most of the time she either walked the corridors in a corporeal haunting or sat in the overstuffed armchair in their bedroom and watched her husband's fitful rest.

This night, her pyjama-clad legs curled beneath her and a hand-knitted blanket drawn round her shoulders, Nan huddled into the armchair and observed her husband thrashing round in the bed. She couldn't tell if he was really asleep or just feigning sleep, but in either case, it didn't matter. The sight of him there roused within her a complicated tangle of emotions more important to consider at the moment than the authenticity of her husband's repose.