In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(203)

Yet even though Lynley knew that DI Hanken was following procedures as they were meant to be followed in his search of Maiden Hall, he still found himself thrashing round in the quagmire of evidence, facts, and conjectures, seeking something that would vindicate Andy. It was, he stubbornly continued to believe, the least he could do.

There appeared to be only one usable fact: that Nicola's rain gear had been missing from among her belongings at Nine Sisters Henge. Alone in his room with the morning sounds of the hotel rising round him, Lynley considered nothing but that waterproof and what its absence from the murder scene meant.

They'd originally thought that the killer had taken the waterproof and worn it to cover his blood-stained clothes. But if he had called at the Black Angel Hotel on Tuesday after the murder, he would hardly have done so wearing rain gear on a fine summer's night. He wouldn't have been willing to run the risk of standing out, and there wasn't much that would have been more conspicuous than a man walking round in rain gear in the midst of Derbyshire's long spell of perfect weather.

To make certain, however, Lynley rang down to the Black Angel's proprietor. A single question—shouted round the ground floor from one employee to another—was sufficient for Lynley to be assured that nothing like that had been played out at the hotel on any night in recent memory. What, then, had become of the waterproof?

Lynley began to pace the room. He reflected on the moor, the murders, and the weapons, and he dwelt upon the mental image he'd constructed of how the crimes had been carried out.

If the killer had taken the garment from the scene but had not worn it from the scene, there seemed to be only two possibilities for its use to him. Either the waterproof had been fashioned into a sort of carrier for transporting something from the henge when the killer left or it had been used in some way by the killer during the commission of the crime.

Lynley dismissed the first prospect as unlikely: The two victims had gone to the henge on foot. What could they have carried in with them that would require something the size of a waterproof to transport out? He went on to the second possibility. And when he lined up all he knew about the killings, what he'd assumed about the killings, and what he'd discovered at the Black Angel Hotel, he finally saw the answer.

The killer had incapacitated the boy with an arrow. He'd then gone after the fleeing girl and dispatched her without much trouble. Returning to the henge, he'd seen that the boy's wound was serious but not mortal. He'd cast about for a quick way of doing him in. He could have stood the boy up—firing-squad fashion—and made of him a modern St. Sebastian, but the boy would hardly have cooperated in that plan. So the killer had torn through the equipment at the site and found the knife and the rain gear. He'd put on the waterproof to protect his clothes while he was knifing the boy Thus he could enter the Black Angel Hotel with impunity later.

A blood-stained waterproof couldn't be left hanging with the black leather jacket, however. The blood on the jacket had soaked into its lining, where it was camouflaged by the material's colour. So the jacket might have taken months to be noticed. But a blood-stained waterproof would not be so easily overlooked.

Yet the killer had to get rid of it. And sooner rather than later. So where … ?

Lynley continued to pace as he pictured that night, the killings, and their aftermath.

The knife had been left along the killer's escape route. It was easy enough to bury in a few inches of grit in a roadside container, a process that would probably have taken no more than thirty seconds.

But the waterproof couldn't be buried there because there wasn't enough grit to do the job and, besides that, on a public road even at night it would have been sheer idiocy to stop for the length of time it would have taken to bury something so bulky in a roadside container.

Yet something very like a roadside container would have worked well as a depository for a garment, something that had an everyday use, something that one saw without thinking about, and something on the way to the hotel where—the killer knew—a black leather jacket could be stowed in plain sight with no one the wiser for ages …

A pillar box? Lynley wondered. But he dismissed the possibility almost as soon as he considered it. Aside from the fact that the killer wouldn't have wanted to go to the effort of cramming the waterproof inch by inch into the slot for letters, the post was collected every day.

Someone's rubbish bin? But there again he encountered virtually the same problem. Unless the killer managed to bury it at the bottom of someone's dustbin, the first time the bin's owner wished to discard a bag of rubbish, the waterproof would be found. Unless, of course, the killer managed to find a bin that was constructed in such a way that rubbish already within it couldn't be seen when someone deposited more. A bin in a public park might have worked for this, one where refuse was shoved through an opening in the cover or the side. But where on the route from Calder Moor to Tideswell did such a park with such a container exist? That's what he needed to find out.

Lynley descended the stairs and got from Reception the same map of the White Peak that Hanken had used on the previous evening. Upon examining the area, the closest Lynley could come to a public park was a nature reserve near Hargatewall. He frowned when he saw how far off the direct route it was. It would have taken the killer a number of miles out of his way. But it was worth a try.

The morning outside was much like the previous day: grey, windy, and rainy. But unlike the previous day when Lynley had arrived, the Black Angel's car park was virtually deserted since it was far too early for even the most inebriated of the hotel's regular patrons to be bellying up to the bar. So with his umbrella raised and the collar of his waxed jacket turned up, Lynley dodged puddles and hurried round the side of the building to the only spot that he'd been able to find for the Bentley on the previous afternoon.