In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(160)

“Can't say …” Andy murmured from the bed.

Nan leaned forward anxiously. She whispered, “What?”

He turned, burrowing his shoulder into the pillow. “No.” It was sleep talk. “No. No.”

Nan's vision blurred. She cast back through the last few months in a desperate attempt to find something that she might have done to alter this ending that they had reached. But she could come up only with having had the courage and the willingness to ask for honesty in the first place, which had not been a realistic option.

Andy turned again. He punched his pillow into shape and flopped from his side onto his back. His eyes were closed.

Nan left her chair and went to the bed, where she sat. She reached forward and brushed her fingertips across her husband's forehead, feeling his skin both clammy and hot. For thirty-seven years he'd been at the centre of her world, and she wasn't about to lose her world's centre at this autumnal date in her life.

But even as she made that determination, Nan knew that life as she currently experienced it was filled with uncertainties. And it was in her uncertainties that her nightmares lay, another reason for her refusal to sleep.

Lynley unlocked his front door just after one in the morning. He was exhausted and heavy of heart. It was difficult to believe that his day had begun in Derbyshire, and more difficult to believe that it had ended in the encounter he'd just experienced in Notting Hill.

Men and women possessed limitless potential to astonish him. He'd long ago accepted that fact, but he realised now that he was getting weary of the constant surprises they had to offer. After fifteen years in CID, he wanted to be able to say he'd seen it all. That he hadn't—that someone could still do something to amaze him—was a fact that weighed in his gut like a boulder. Not so much because he couldn't understand a person's actions but because he continually failed to anticipate them.

He'd remained with Vi Nevin until she regained consciousness. He'd hoped she'd be able to name her attacker and thus provide him with an immediate reason for arresting the bastard. But she'd shaken her swollen, bandaged head as Lynley questioned her. All he was able to glean from the injured woman was that she'd been set upon too suddenly to manage a clear look at her assailant. Whether that was a lie that she told to protect herself was something that Lynley couldn't discern. But he thought he knew, and he cast about for a way to make it easier for her to say the necessary words.

“Tell me what happened, then, moment by moment, because there may be something, a detail you recall, that we can use to—”

“That's quite enough for now” The sister in charge of casualty intervened, her blunt Scot's face a picture of steely determination.

“Male or female?” Lynley pressed the injured woman.

“Inspector, I made myself clear,” the sister snapped. And she hovered protectively over her childlike patient, making what seemed like unnecessary adjustments to bedclothes, pillows, and drips.

“Miss Nevin?” Lynley prodded nonetheless.

“Out!” the sister said as Vi murmured, “A man.”

Upon hearing that, Lynley decided enough identification had been established. She wasn't, after all, telling him anything that he didn't already know. He'd merely wanted to eliminate the possibility that Shelly Platt—and not Martin Reeve—had come calling on her old flatmate. Having done that much, he felt justified in taking matters to the next level.

He'd begun that process at the Star of India in Old Brompton Road, where a conversation with the maitre d’ established that Martin Reeve and his wife, Tricia—both of whom were regulars in the restaurant—had indeed taken a meal there earlier in the week. But no one could say on what evening they'd occupied their table by the window. The waiters were evenly divided between Monday and Tuesday while the maitre d’ himself seemed able to recall only that which he had written evidence of in his reservations folder.

“I see they did not book,” he said in his lilting voice. “Ah, one must book at the Star of India to guarantee a seating.”

“Yes. She claims they didn't book,” Lynley told him. “She said that was the cause of a row between you and her husband. On Tuesday night.”

“I do not row with the customers, sir,” the man had said stiffly. And the offence he took at Lynley's remark had coloured the rest of his memory.

The indefinite nature of the corroboration from the Star of India gave Lynley the impetus to call upon the Reeves despite the hour. And as he drove to do so, he fixed in his mind the image of Vi Nevin's ruined face. When finally he'd negotiated his way to the top of Kensington Church Street and made the turn into Notting Hill Gate, he was feeling the sort of slow-burning anger that made it easy for him to persist at the doorbell of MKR Financial Management when no one answered his initial ring.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” was Martin Reeves greeting to him upon jerking open the door. He didn't even need to identify himself for Lynley to know who he was. The overhead light which illuminated his face and glowed brightly against four fresh deep scratches on his cheek told the tale well enough.

He strong-armed Reeve backwards into the entry corridor of the house. He muscled him into the wall—easy enough to do since the pimp was so much smaller than Lynley had anticipated—and held him there with one cheek pressed into the tastefully striped wallpaper.